Weaver Girl
by Kitsuru
Summary: Had there always been so many stars? So bright, so beautiful, so familiar and so very strange at the same time. -Ichihime, RenRuki
1. Words, Hands, Hearts

**Disclaimer**: If it seems even vaguely familiar to you, I don't own it. That goes for Bleach, the song titles, and the cultural references here and there.

Well, at long last, fifteen minutes before the deadline, I've FINALLY finished my entry for this years' Tanabata contest at FLOL! Thanks to everyone who supported me and put up with my panic attacks; especially **copperheadfightingninja**, **xNocturnalxShadowx**, and everyone else! I'd list you all by name, but I'm running out of time so I'd better just cut to the fic. Hope it's worth the wait!

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It was hard to believe that the Winter War had begun yesterday, months earlier than expected. And even harder for him to accept that it had ended only a few hours later.

A week ago, a few _days_ ago even, he had been in Karakura, training and getting drafted into dishwashing duty. It had been common knowledge that the Winter War would, surprisingly enough, take place in the winter. He had only thought about the next day as another day of training, nothing more, nothing less. Looking back, it seemed so surreal.

But the thing that _really_ got him, that he _really_ had trouble understanding, was the fact that he had helped to save a guys life and the jerk didn't even bother to say 'thank you.'

"What an a—"

Before he could finish the sentence, someone stomped on his foot. HARD. He yelped and tried to jump to his feet, unfortunately forgetting that he had been sitting; and fell backwards, still clutching at his throbbing foot. "What was that for?!"

"Shut up!" Rukia, next to him, hissed.

"Why?" The substitute shinigami retorted. "It's not like he's even here to listen, the ba—OW!"

Renji, on her other side, sniggered. Before the substitute shinigami could punch his lights out, however, the redhead let out a cry not unlike the one he had uttered mere moments ago.

Now it was Ichigo's turn to smirk—although not to laugh, of course, since his foot was still throbbing. He was very careful not to mention _that_ little detail, however, knowing full well that could _possibly_ be construed as even the _slightest_ insinuation that they _might_ be _almost_ heavy would be taken as an invitation for a swift, agonizing death by every female in earshot. Growing up with the sisters and childhood sparring partner that he had had would drive lessons like that deep into even the thickest skull.

_Speaking of Tatsuki… _Ichigo glanced across the table, discretely examining the bright-haired girl seated across from him. Orihime had spent the war fighting in her own way—working alongside the best healers of the Fourth Division to save those who had been struck down.

In the turmoil of the battle, there had been times when he had almost been struck from behind, only to whirl around at the sound of an Arrancar's blade screaming against her shield. But after he had dealt with the attacker, he had turned back to thank her, but all he managed to catch was the briefest glimpse of bright eyes she turned back to whatever limp body she was bent over.

Later, when Aizen had managed to find a single moment of calm in the chaos, the eye of the storm in which he could break into the King's Realm without interruption, it had been her who had figured out how to follow him, despite their lack of the King's Key. He still wasn't sure how, exactly, she had been able to get them through the barrier, but there hadn't been time to question anything. Once they had gotten through, all there was time for was to _run and lunge and dodge and __**fight**__._

And she had still kept on healing the wounded—and even, if a flash at the corner of his eyes could have been believed…

He resisted the urge to shake his head, to clear the impossible thoughts from his worn mind. He had to have imagined it. The lack of sleep had probably caused it. Before the end of the battle, he hadn't gotten a full night of sleep since—_Kami-sama, how long has it been? _

The last time he had slept—if he didn't count a nap or being knocked out by Ulquiorra—had been after he had fought Grimmjow for the second time, before he had known that Orihime had been kidnapped. They had gone to Hueco Muendo around midnight the night after and it had to have taken at least six hours to get to Las Noches, during which they had taken turns napping in two-hour shifts. And now that he was thinking about it, they had joined the battle in the Real World during the middle of the afternoon. By the time the fighting had been finished, it had been night again.

And really, the battle had only ended then for _him_. Orihime, on the other hand, had still been hard at work healing when Unohana had ordered anyone who could still move to crawl to a bed and get some res. There had been many—too many—fighters who were still badly wounded, and only four healers to tend to them.

And, come to think of it, she had been the one to wake them all up the next morning… Ichigo frowned as a less-than-pleasant possibility occurred to him. _No way, not even Inoue would…_

The girl in question finally glanced up from her cup of tea, and blinked as she saw him watching her. She stared at him for a moment, startled, and then smiled. She was pale, her hair was tangled and matted, and the shadows under her eyes were even worse than they had been last time that Ichigo had actually _looked_, which had been right after he had defeated Grimmjow. Less than twenty-four hours ago.

"_Were you relieved to see her unhurt?" _That familiar growl echoed across hours that seemed like centuries, like millennia, and yet at the same time like only the briefest of moments. _"Even though she might be a little fucked up on the inside?!"_

"_That girl is already one of us."_ The substitute shinigami's grip tightened on his mug. _"Even if you manage to rescue her, that won't change."_

"_Stay back!" _His gaze lingered over the white shinigami-regulation kosode one of the Squad Zero members had leant to her, in place of the remnants of that monochrome gown. _"One step closer and I'll pluck out her eyeball!"_

_Inoue… _He was strong, but this helpless feeling was something that he couldn't fight, with or without his bankai and mask. _What happened to you over there?_

"Kurosaki-kun?" She resembled nothing so much as a walking corpse—and Ichigo had seen more than enough of those in the last twenty-four hours to know one when he saw one—yet she actually managed to _smile_. It was an exhausted, flickering and burnt out attempt, but it was a smile nevertheless. "Is something wrong? You're not still hurt, are you? Did I miss something yesterday? I'm sorry, just—"

"I'm fine." He said quickly, clenching his fist slightly. He wished that she wouldn't worry about him, about any of them. He knew it was the type of person she was… but more and more often he was starting to think that _she_ was the one who needed to be worried about the most. "Inoue, when was the last time you slept?"

Orihime blinked again, as did the others around the table. They looked at her—actually _looked_, for the first time in too long—and saw what Ichigo had seen. And heard it, too, in the way that she hesitated for a heartbeat too long before answering with "not too long."

"How long is a 'not too long'?" Ishida had caught on, and his eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

"Um… there were a lot of injuries, you see, and it took a lo—"

Chad sighed. He didn't look surprised. "You didn't sleep at all last night, did you?"

"Or the night before that," Ichigo guessed before Orihime could say anything, "and probably not the night before that, either."

"I—"

"Inoue!" Rukia leapt to her feet, and grabbed her human friend by the arm. "I can't believe you!"

"But I'm fine, Kuchiki-san, everyone, really I am!"

"You don't look fine," Renji put in bluntly. The other shinigami smacked him on the head, and he fell forward into the table. As he got up, gingerly touching what he suspected was his broken nose—owowow that was definitely what it was _ow_—he glared at her. "Rugia! Whad wad dhad bor?"

"You need to ask?" She threw her free hand in the air in disgust. "Men!"

"Don't lump us all in with him!" Ishida protested, pushing his glasses farther up on his nose.

"You're just as bad!" Rukia snapped.

"Am not!"

"If you plan on resorting to _that_ childish argument as your defense, then yes, you are." The Kuchiki stuck her nose in the air and her tongue out at the Quincy, who studiously ignored her, before turning back to Orihime. The human had been trying to discretely tug her arm free while Rukia was distracted. "And what did you think you were doing, going into battle while you were exhausted like that? You could have been killed!"

Chad briefly considered pointing out that none of them had slept much—if at all—the night that they stormed Hueco Muendo, as well as that fighting even at full strength wasn't exactly safe, but thought better of it after a few more seconds of watching Renji try in vain to staunch the blood flow from his nose. It wouldn't help their case, and besides, he liked his face the way it was.

"I'm alright, Kuchiki-san, I really am!" Orhime was saying. "Hanatarou-kun gave me this supplement pill—"

"Dode are bade ob blour." Renji, still clutching his nose, blinked at the way everyone stared at him. "Idade-bugudaijou dold be."

"Translation?" Ichigo asked after nearly a full minute of silence. "Anyone?"

"I believe Abarai-san said that they were… made in towers?" Ishida guessed.

The redhead rolled his eyes. "Bade ob blour."

"Made in China?" Chad guessed, earning a few odd glances, which he replied to with a shrug.

"Bade. Ob. Blour." The fukutaichou repeated slowly, carefully, and still utterly undecipherably.

"Made of flowers?" Orihime guessed.

"Ur." Renji was twitching, almost imperceptibly but obvious to all of their group. "Blo-_ur_."

"Flower?" Rukia blinked. "Wait, _flour_? They're made of flour?"

"Yed!" Her nakama nodded so fiercely that his ponytail almost found itself unraveling. How it had managed to stay on during a battle that would go down in the history books was a question as unanswerable as one answered by a certain number.

"I knew it!" The substitute declared, punching the air. "Ganju owes me a thousand yen!"

"Good for you," Rukia retorted, "now if you'll excuse us—"

"Kuchiki-san, that's alright, I can—"

"—We have to be going." The Kuchiki finished above her friends' protests. She fixed the remainder of the group with a glare. "If any of you act like you usually do while I'm gone; I'll make Aizen look like a harmless little bunny and _I'll start low_. Got it?"

"Got it." They chorused, wincing.

"God id." Renji managed.

"Good boys," she crooned, beaming at them. They made an admirable effort not to feel whipped. It was an exercise in futility, of course, but it was admirable all the same.

And speaking of exercises in futility…

"Nice try," she said as she grabbed hold of the back of Orihime's shirt. The girl had managed to slip out of her grip and had been about to sneak back towards the rest of the group. Her friend firmly in hand, Rukia strode towards the door. "Now let's—"

A split second after opening the door, the adopted member of the Kuchiki clan walked right into something oddly soft and warm. She stayed where she was for exactly five seconds before it hit her: she had just accidentally buried her face in the breasts of one Kirio Hikifune, former Captain of the Twelfth Division and current Captain of the Royal Guard.

_Why didn't I update my will?_ She berated herself as she jumped back. _I knew the war was coming, I had _hours_ of doing absolutely nothing before Renji and I went to Hueco Mundo… and even before that, there was the whole execution mess! I can't believe that I had _weeks_ there thinking that I was going to die, and I never even thought of writing a will!_

"Sumimasen!" She said, bowing and pulling Orihime down with her. Her brother, the tutors he had hired—even the _lowest_ of the servants had drilled it into her, time and time again, that should she ever find herself in a situation where she was face to face with someone far above the rank of captain, she should err on the side of caution in her etiquette.

The Kuchiki were a proud clan, yes, but not a stupid one.

"It's alright, Kuchiki-san." Hikifune assured her quickly. "We rarely stand on ceremony here, and certainly not with those who did as much to help us as you and your friends have."

Her eyes moved from Rukia to Orihime, and from the human to the rest of the ryoka. Renji was getting up from his kowtow—he had spent too much time with his captain _not_ to have a basic understanding of what to do when in the same room as the captain of the Royal Guard, even if it hadn't been burned into his gray matter as it had been with Rukia's—and the others ranged from looking confused to wearing an admittedly impressive poker faces.

"Would you mind staying here, just for a little longer?" The woman asked the two who were on their feet, a genuine request rather than the order which she had ample authority to give. "There is something that must be discussed as soon as possible, and with all of you present."

"Of course not, Hikifune-sama." Rukia bowed again, and let the relieved Orihime go. While the caramel-haired girl hurried back to her place, her friend returned to her previous location next to Renji. Hikifune herself sat at the end of the low table, shifting slightly so as not to wrinkle the white haori wrapped around her waist like a belt.

"Your actions yesterday are to be commended," she began, rather formally for someone who had just been protesting 'standing on ceremony'. "Without the aid of all of you, it is very likely that Aizen Sousuke's plot would have ended as he had wanted it to, and we would not be having this conversation. The King is in your debt, as are those of us who defend him."

And with that, the woman bowed. It wasn't a slight nod of acknowledgement, nor was it the lower bow of respect that Rukia had given her. No, it was a full-fledged, forehead to the ground kowtow.

Rukia and Renji's jaws hit the floor. Chad and Ishida exchanged startled glances. Orihime was too sleepy to realize that a former captain and current head of the Royal Guard prostrating herself was out of the ordinary, and Ichigo was muttering something that sounded suspiciously similar to "about time".

"You may each ask a boon of the Spirit King," Hikifune continued as she straightened up, "this is a rare incident, but not entirely unprecedented. The last time such a favor was bestowed, it resulted in the creation of the seireitei."

"For instance," she turned her appraising gaze upon Ishida, "you could request the restoration of the Quincy clan. From then on, harming such a human would be among the highest of offences. There would be shinigami dedicated solely to seeking out and watching over those who have the potential to learn your art, and then guiding them to you for instruction when they are old enough. It would take time, possibly centuries, but your clan would be restored. They would be allowed to work alongside shinigami or on their own if they wished, and have all of the same Hollow-fighting rights as any member of the thirteen squads."

Ishida was silent for a moment. His glasses caught the light, hiding his eyes. "…What of the balance between the worlds?"

"The Quincy's developed their abilities for vengeance, to be able to completely destroy the souls of Hollows." Hikifune reminded him. "However, the founders did not use their powers in such a way, rather, they cleansed souls as the shinigami did. Our library has many ancient texts of the Quincy clan, and you are welcome to them."

The dark-haired teen said nothing, and after a moment the leader of Squad Zero nodded in understanding and turned to Rukia. "We could talk to your brother, and relay to him what we have seen during the course of the battle. You more than deserve a promotion."

"That's… very kind of you," the girl replied slowly, "but why speak to my brother, and not my captain?"

"Well, didn't your brother request for you to remain an unseated officer, when you first joined the Thirteenth Division?" Hikifune asked, frowning slightly. "Ukitake mentioned that he had done so…"

"HE _WHAT_?!" The younger shinigami shrieked. Several people covered their ears, wincing, and Orihime literally fell over. When she righted herself, she looked much closer to being awake than she had previously, and sat a bit farther from her friend.

The captain blinked. "You didn't know?"

"I do _now_." Rukia growled. There was bloodlust in the air around her, and everyone scooted several inches away. "Thank you, Hikifune-sama, that would be excellent, although I believe that I wish to k—speak to my honored brother beforehand."

"Please don't murder him, we happen to be a bit short on captains at the moment." Hikifune said, only half-jokingly, before moving on to the next ryoka. "Abarai-san, we can grant you ennoblement, to put you on an even footing with those close to you," her eyes flicked briefly to Rukia.

"I'm not that selfish," the redhead snorted. "I'll get there on my own power. I don't need to be adopted into some lesser noble family to—"

"You misunderstand." She cut in with a knowing smile. "When I said that you would be inducted into the nobility, I did not mean as a member of a lesser clan… or even, for that matter, an already-existing clan at all."

The fukutaichou blinked before giving his rather eloquent answer. "Huh?"

"With the fall of the Shiba Clan, the five great noble families of Soul Society have been brought down to four. If you should wish it, you would be the founder of the new fifth family."

Renji blinked. And blinked again. Then he blinked a third time, just to make sure. "…Wow. I… um… _really_ wow."

"I'll give you some time to think it over." The woman told him with a chuckle. She glanced at Rukia again, and noted that the shorter shinigami was looking almost as shocked as her tattooed friend. _Better give her some time too…_

"And what of the rest of you?" She asked the remaining trio. "You must have something that you have wished for, throughout this War. We will do our best to grant it."

Surprisingly, it was the most taciturn of them who broke the resulting silence. Chad put his mug down, and cleared his throat.

"There's a boy, in Rukongai," he began, "Shibata Yuichi. Could you help him find his mother?"

Everyone blinked and gave him a startled look. They had always known that their friend was truly selfless one, who never raised his fists for his own sake, but to see someone giving away such a gift was a shock.

"No," Hikifune shook her head. Eyes widened and voices started, only to be stalled as she raised one hand and gave them a reassuring smile. "I do not think that alone will suffice. Shinigami will sent out to each district to conduct a census and to collect the names of those who would find their families. They will then be assigned there to keep the peace, while incoming souls will be registered while they are assigned districts."

"Thank you," not only Chad, but Rukia and Renji as well, said. The latter two looked close to tears, and Ichigo was torn between taunting them and asking what the heck was going on. Then he remembered where they had come from and made the wise decision to keep his mouth shut for once.

Somewhere, a pig was soaring happily through the air.

"There is nothing to thank me for." Hikifune gave them a sad smile. "The seireitei was founded to protect souls, and that should not apply only to fighting Hollows. The shinigami have long needed to be reminded of that."

The two former denizens of Inuzuri nodded with weary but wondering eyes, and the woman looked to the orange-haired shinigami. She grinned at him, pushing her sorrow to the side. "Your turn."

Ichigo blinked, and then shrugged. He'd never actually thought about it, even when ranting about the apparently cold treatment that the king had been giving them before the captain of squad zero had arrived. "Just… try not to let it happen again, okay?"

"We'll do our best." She told him, grave despite the obvious lack of thought behind the request. Finally, she turned towards Orihime, who gazed down into her tea. "And what of you, Inoue-san? What is it that you wish for?"

The girl said nothing. She didn't even look up at Hikifune. Not that it was surprising, after all… people may dream of finding a genie and getting a wish, but few would be able to immediately make their choice if confronted with the reality. So, they waited…

…and waited…

…and waited some more, until finally…

"She's asleep." Chad declared.

"Huh?" The bright-haired girl raised her head. She looked tired, yes, but there was no doubt that she was awake. Or a very good at appearing to be so when she wasn't. "Oh, I'm awake, don't worry. It's just… can I give my wish to someone else?"

Everyone gaped at her. She went on, either not noticing or feigning ignorance. "It's just, I can't really think of anything I want. Just for all of us to be able to go home again."

"Inoue…" Rukia said softly, smiling. The others felt something within them relax as well; despite whatever had happened before they had rescued her, some things never changed.

The girl glanced at her, with eyes that were far older than they should have been—eyes that she herself had looked at in the mirror, after they had seen the sterile sekki-sekki walls of the Senzaikyū and met the blinding gaze of the Sōkyoku—and then quickly turned away. "I'm sorry, Kuchiki-san, I can't think of anything else… I know it's silly, since we're all going back anyways, but—"

"No, it's not!" Rukia and Ichigo interrupted her, the latter leaping to his feet as he did so.

The dark-haired shinigami blinked up at him for a long moment before turning back to their mutual friend, who was staring up at him in shock as well. She placed her hands on Orihime's shoulders and swiveled her around slightly until their eyes met.

"I know how you feel, Inoue," she told her nakama, "it's a good wish, and one we're all looking forward to seeing come true."

The others nodded, all of them wearing the weary yet revitalized smiles of soldiers who are finally, after too long, going to return to home and peace. Sure, there would still be some fighting, a Hollow here and maybe the occasional Menos there, but they would again be able to—

Hikifune put down her tea with a soft _tink_ that nonetheless managed to draw the ryoka's attention. Perhaps it was the sudden feeling of DOOM in the air, or the way that she gazed down at the table for several seconds too long before meeting their eyes, but each of them found themselves reaching for their weapons.

"No." Ichigo spoke in a quiet tone, but it was the hush of an assassin's blade the instant before it was drawn for it's razor edge. "Whatever you're going to say, _don't_."

"Unfortunately, I have as little choice in the matter as you do." The Captain of the Royal Guard told him regretfully. "You may return to your homes—"

"I sense a 'but' coming on," Ishida muttered, his eyes narrowed in anger and suspicion behind the thick frames of his glasses. Chad nodded, clenching his fists as he prepared to jump in if the universe went back to its previous sadistic standard of how it treated them.

"—but the Ouken must remain."

Silence ensued. Those ryoka who made their homes in the living world couldn't help but be surprised at the lack of chirping crickets.

"…That's it?" Chad finally asked. Hikifune nodded, surprised at the relief on their faces. It was almost as if—oh.

_Oh, no._

"You don't know, do you?" She asked, knowing that she had to even though she dreaded the answer. "What the Royal Key truly is."

"It's the key to the Royal Realm." Orihime piped up.

"Yes, but…" She thought for a moment, and then changed tactics. It would be better to lead them to it, rather than say it outright. "Do you know how it was made?"

"One hundred thousand souls," Ichigo said bitterly, remember just how close his friends and family in Karakura had come to being in that number, "and reishi-enriched land. What are you getting at?"

"The Ouken… is not what you think it is." There was no way she could put it delicately, at least not enough to really be able to cushion the blow. "One hundred thousand souls, forged into one force that can manipulate reality itself. Not a _what_, but a _who_."

Realization hit the most intelligent of the ryoka rather quickly, reinforcing to her just how different these children were. The rest, still quite smart, were held back not from foolishness, but from the sheer impossibility of it.

It couldn't be. It shouldn't be. They tried to tell themselves it wouldn't be, but those that did so knew that it _was_ as they watched Hikifune look to a pair of bright, weary eyes. She held them with her own, willing a silent apology into them and hoping that it would be heard. They were still children, all of them—but they would understand when they were older, that this was what she had to do.

"You can never see your home again," she said softly, hating each word even as she forced herself to speak it. "You are the Royal Key… Inoue Orihime."


	2. Drops of Jupiter

"We can't let them do this!" Rukia, previously so awed at Squad Zero, was now a hair away from trying to murder them all where they stood, cackling all the while.

"We won't." Ichigo vowed, his fingers already itching to reach for Zangetsu's wrapped hilt. He'd fight his way through with his bare hands if he had to, screw what was supposed to be possible. "We'll fight."

So what if the Royal Guards were all shinigami who had been promoted from being captains? So what if most of them were at least ten times older than the six of them combined? So the heck what if some of them could take on the soutaichou and not come out burnt to the ashes of a crisp? The ryoka had proved countless times just how incredibly suicidal they were.

_Wait…_ He blinked. Something about that hadn't sounded quite right.

"We'll get ourselves killed, you mean." Renji muttered bitterly, voicing the same worry that the little voice in the back of Ichigo's head—no, not his Inner Hollow, this was whatever vestiges of his Sanity had managed to survive his shinigamification—had been reminding him of.

The orangette disregarded his concerns just as he had those of that voice. "Okay, we'll run after we kick their asses!"

"Where?" Chad asked simply, and for too long of a moment there was silence.

"Soul Society works for them." There was no anger in Ishida's voice, no rage, only a muted weariness. "We could try to get to the living world, but they'd be looking for us there. We couldn't even stay in Karakura, that'd be the first place they'd look and we can't put our families at risk. Besides, even those of us who are used to living alone have never had to work for a living. And I believe that I speak for everyone when I say that Hueco Mundo is _not_ an option."

The others nodded fervent accord on that last sentence, except for a thoughtful Ichigo. "You know..."

"Kurosaki!"

"Ichigo!"

"Idiot!"

"Wait," he held up a hand, "just hear me out. Aizen and his goons are gone, and Grimmjow owes us. Nell her brothers, and that guy with the weird name only left to stay with us, they wouldn't mind going back. We could hide out there, at least for a while!"

"And during that time, Inoue would constantly be reminded of what had happened." The adopted member of the Kuchiki Clan murmured, remembering the way she had had to turn her head to keep from seeing the execution grounds for a month after her own ordeal. Even after all this time, there was still a stab to her heart when she saw the scarred cliffside where the scaffold had once stood so proudly, the empty air where the Sokyoku had once challenged the sky. She still averted her gaze altogether when she passed the Senzaikyu, not yet having braved more than an accidental glance or two at that sterile spiritual void before being reminded of how it felt to be cut from everything but the slimmest sliver of blue, to know that there were battles being waged for her sake but nothing else, to be _apart._

For Orihime to have to reside in Las Noches again, and for them to be there with her, all for a reason that she would see as _her fault_, would be akin to Rukia leading her friends into that white tower and locking them all in together. It would be torture for anyone, especially someone like the gentle healer who cared more for her friends than anything else in the world, even—or more accurately, especially—herself.

"There's got to be somewhere we can go." Ichigo was practically shouting now, "_Anywhere_."

"It's not where _we_ can't go," Renji said, shaking his head. "It's where Inoue _can_. And there's only—"

"Here." Rukia finished for him.

She sat down heavily, burying her face in her palms and tangling her fingers in her short hair. Her redheaded nakama leaned over and draped a cautious arm around her, his touch lingering a bit longer than necessary as his fingers trailed down her arm to draw her closer. When she didn't protest, he drew her against his side in the only comfort he could offer, slight as it was, and to soothe the empty feeling in his own chest he rested his chin on the top of her head and tried to focus on the scent of her hair, the way she relaxed ever so slightly at his touch even if she still couldn't bear to look up from her hands.

There was nothing that could be said after that. But, Ichigo being Ichigo, he managed to find a way. "We can't let them do this."

"We're not giving up," Ishida told him, "but let's be realistic. Each of us could most likely match an average captain in a one-on-one fight, but Squad Zero…"

"We wouldn't have a chance, no matter how hard we fought or how fast we ran." The Vice Captain wouldn't meet anyone's gaze, instead closing his eyes and pulling Rukia closer against him.

"What choice do we have?" Chad sounded genuinely curious, rather than worried—they'd find a way, they always did. "What choice does _she_ have?"

"Plenty!" The orangette whirled around. "Inoue, you can't tell me you want to… Inoue?"

The girl was leaning against the wall, half curled in on herself with her head facing away from them. All they could see was her long caramel hair, tumbling over her shoulders and down to the polished wooden floor. Before any of them could call out to her again, their leader—not that several of them would say as much to his face, but all acknowledged it silently, he was the one who had brought them to each other—had walked over to her side and bent down. His hand tapped her shoulder gently, almost as if he were brushing aside a stray hair. "Inoue?"

"Mmm… no, Kurosaki-kun…" She murmured, her head lolling slightly. "The park isn't any good for a cooking contest, the kites are too busy with their dancing lessons, and the parade…"

"How can she fall asleep after all of this?" Renji shook his head in mingled awe, exasperation, and something none of them dared name. For if they did, they would have to admit that it was in themselves as well.

"She's tired." Chad rumbled simply.

"Thank you, state the obvious-san." Rukia muttered sarcastically, twisting around to get a better look at her friend from over the redhead's shoulder. She sighed, reluctantly starting to pull free from her nakama's comforting hold. "I'll get her to her room, and then we can—"

Without even glancing her way, Ichigo cut her off with a shake of his head. Before she could ask what he was doing, he had gotten a grip on Orihime's waist. He made to heft her over his shoulder, but before he could do so she sighed and uncurled slightly, almost falling right into the startled substitute shinigami. He shifted his grip to support her back, and when he stood up he was carrying the unconscious girl bridal-style.

He didn't acknowledge the others as he carefully made his way to the door, taking care not to jar the girl in his arms, who merely nestled against his chest with a sleepy murmur of contentment once before falling back down into the depths of sleep. When Rukia got to her feet to open it, Ichigo didn't even look at her.

"We're not giving up." Four words, softly spoken but carrying in the silence; those were all that he left the other ryoka with before he stepped through the door. They were the only admittance that they were still there, that the conversation would be continued, that they had fought their way through two worlds of foes already… a third could be vanquished as well.

Should be.

_Would_ be.

-----

When she opened her eyes, darkness was there to greet her. Black curtains drawn before the world, fraying away at the edges to reveal a thin curl of silver light. It melted, cascading down to spill across her body and drown her in this white night—

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, before they could stumble upon those hated bars, so thin and fragile—and yet all the worse for that. The girl curled in on herself, wrapping her arms beneath the blankets around her skirt-swathed legs…

_Wait._

Bare skin. No skirt, no cape, no uniform. Orihime's eyes flew open, tracing that path of celestial light, finding at its end—

_The moon,_ she thought, she whispered, she sang, she didn't know but it didn't matter because the hoary crescent was facing the other way, the _right_ way, a little thinner than it had been that night when she had stood on the river, steeling herself to say what could have been her final farewell.

Had it only been a few days since then? It must have been, to look at that silvered blade so high above. Either that, or she had been gone for long enough that at least a full lunar cycle had passed, if not a hundred.

When had she gotten to her feet? The surface of the window was cool beneath her fingertips, almost as glass would be, but even the best quality of glass was nowhere near as smooth and unblemished as the pane of… whatever the material in front of her was. Even the time when her brother had gotten a brand new window after the old one had been broken in a storm, it had been nothing like this.

And beyond it…

Had there always been so many stars? So bright, so beautiful, so familiar and so very strange at the same time. Names tumbled through her mind, out of her mouth, but she heard not her own voice but the many cadences of memory.

"_Yama neko_… _tokage_… _ko—_"

"Inoue?"

She jumped and tried to turn around at the same time, a rather impressive show of acrobatics culminating in her tripping over her own feet upon landing and tumbling to the ground in an inelegant heap. Or maybe tumbled wasn't the best word, since tumblers at the circus could always manage to fall gracefully when they fell at all, rolling over and springing to their feet in a single fluid moment and throwing their hands up into the air to bask in the applause of their astounded audience.

Several seconds later, she remembered who that audience was. She also recalled that, rather than being garbed in glittering, sequin-strewn leotard and tights, she was wearing a kosade that had bunched up even higher up her legs than the normal length of her school uniforms' skirt. And, being the intelligent girl she was, that naturally led to a realization that Kurosaki Ichigo was currently getting a view several of their classmates would have killed for.

"You okay?" The orangette was blinking quite a bit, Orihime noticed with relief, and squinting slightly. Quickly, before his eyes could adjust to the darkness, she smoothed down the bottom of the robe and sat up, tucking her legs partially underneath her. She was about to get to her feet, only to find him already plopping down next to her, still favoring her with a concerned frown.

"I'm fine, Kurosaki-kun!" She chirped, hoping that he still couldn't see her flush. She, however, could easily make out the dubious expression he was leveling on her, and attempted to banish it with a silly grin and a rap on her forehead. "I've got a really really hard head!"

"I remember." Ichigo told her dryly, rubbing the back of his head with a slight wince. His nakamas smile drained away in an instant, and before the Vaizord could do more than assault himself with mental curses, she was off.

"Oh no, is your head still hurting from that time in Soul Society?" Rather than wait for his answer, she barreled over his half-formed thought of a reply with her trademark babbling. "I'm really really _really _sorry about that, I can't believe I forgot!"

"Inoue—"

"Sit down, hurry, it's not good to be on your feet if you're hurt! Especially not when you have a head injury, what if all of your blood rushes to your brain and your legs and arms don't get any circulation and you have to cut them off and get peg legs?"

"Inoue…"

"And then all of the blood in your head will leak into your ears, and you'll be off-balance, and you'll have to walk around on all fours, and since it'll sound like you're a horse you'll think that you're really a singing donkey!"

"In—wait, a singing _what_?"

"And there aren't any wandering ogres nowadays, they're all too busy doing cooking shows, but without them who'll you sing the travel song with? And if you can't sing the travel song, you'll be sad, and Kurosaki-kun deserves…"

She looked away from him, and he had to lean forward to catch the whispered conclusion. "Kurosaki-kun deserves better…"

She trailed off, her head tilted in innocent bewilderment and concern as she watched her orange-haired classmate double over in laughter. "Kurosaki-kun? Did all of the blood rush to the pleasure center of your brain?"

He couldn't help it; he began chortling even harder at those words, sniggers pouring out after having been bottled up for so long—when was the last time he had laughed like he was now, really and truly? Not with the Arrancar, not with the Vaizords, not with the Shinigami…

But it was with her, that he found it happening so easily. Her, with her bright hair and brighter eyes and the brightest smile when it was real. She worried him, she confused him, she made him stand back and watch her antics with a shaking head and a grin that felt oddly _right_.

"I missed you," he blurted when he managed to regain his breath, long before thought could even begin to rear it's ugly head. It did anyways, of course, and brought his runaway tongue to a tangled mess, his too-swift speech to a screeching halt. And when he saw the way that her head jerked towards him, her eyes widened, his mind started to run around in frantic little circles, swearing all the while.

"Like I missed everyone else, too!" He added quickly, unsure of why his face was as warm as it was, but fully convinced that he wouldn't be thinking about it anytime within the next few lifetimes. He turned away, looking out at the sky, tracing the milky way up into the heavens.

"You're going home, Inoue," he told her, in a voice as subtle yet razor sharp as his bankai. "We all are."

The silence that followed those words was, to the shinigamis ears, one of the loudest to have ever been heard. He couldn't have said how long it lasted—a few heartbeats, hours, _years?_—but the rustling of cloth that broke it was nearly deafening. His gaze snapped to where her delicate, gentle hands fisted in the stark white fabric of her borrowed kosode, mere inches above the pale skin of—

When had Orihime gotten such nice thighs? Scratch that, when had she gotten thighs period? Heck, when had she gotten legs? Didn't she know how many more perverts like Shinji those would attract?

Ichigo had always known that she wasn't a floating head, of course, but he'd always tried to avoid looking farther down than her face. When he'd first met her, there'd been nothing out of the ordinary to look at there, but since ninth… well, by then she had been Tatsuki's friend, and later his as well, and you didn't stare at friends-of-friends' or friends' chests, even if it was just to wonder how in the worlds they stayed on. Not that he had ever wanted too, at least no more than—fuck, now he was the one babbling, even if it wasn't out loud. And to make matters worse, he was staring at all of the _wrong_—although certain parts of his body would disagree, whether he liked it or not—places.

With a disturbing amount of effort, he jerked his gaze back up to her face, which was turned away from him, up towards the star-strewn night. She hadn't noticed his wandering eyes.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that. But he _did _know that it wasn't important right now. None of that was. That could all be dealt with when they were home, after they had been berated by Ochi-sensei, lectured by their families, and annoyed by half of Karakura along with most of Soul Society. When she was happy, and home, then he could worry about his behavior. But until then…

She wasn't supposed to be staring out the window with that look on her face that made him want to punch someone. She should have been smiling and chattering away about giant robots, he was supposed to be trying to cut in to ask her for some help in the upcoming midterms, they were supposed to be _home_.

"I'm sorry," the worlds tumbled into the room; so many jagged edges for only two short jumbles of letters, scratching and tearing at his throat before they clattered to the smooth wooden floor. Her hair whispered accompaniment as she whirled around, two pairs of eyes too old before their time meeting and holding each other before he turned towards the sky that was familiar, and yet so very not.

"I promised to protect you." Instead of that too-familiar crimson liquid, he bled yet more words. He'd have preferred blood—it would have tasted far less bitter. "I failed."

"Kurosaki-kun—"

He didn't want—or at least, he didn't deserve—her forgiveness. Whatever she had meant when she had said he deserved "better", he would have been willing to bet that she was wrong. So he cut her off, rather than allow her to try and heal him again. "Whatever happened to you over there shouldn't have. And the same goes for what those bastards in the Royal Guard are trying to do now."

He turned back towards her, fastening onto her bright eyes; they were wide with startlement, briefly wiped clean of the shadows that had thrived mere moments before. "I won't let them take you away. Never again."

Where had the space between them gone? She was so close—he could feel her breath, warm against his chin, still faintly perfumed with the strange foods she adored so much. He wondered if her lips would taste like them, realizing that the scent was actually rather sweet…

It seemed years later when Orihime finally tore her gaze away, and the shinigami was left blinking dazedly at the back of her head and wondering what the Hueco Mundo had just happened. By the time he had shoved the incident to the darkest corner of his mind, where looters had smashed the sideways windows and even spiders had long ago abandoned their webs, she had shifted so that her back was ever-so-slightly turned towards him, and her face was almost completely hidden.

His Inner Hollow was laughing at him, the bastard, Ichigo just _knew _it. As soon as he figured out whatever was going on, he was going beat the loudmouthed, monochromatic monster into a silent, red pulp.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, Orihime was fighting desperately to banish that same hue from her face. And her heartbeat! It was so loud, so fast, she was sure it would burst out of her chest at any moment. She couldn't help but wonder; was that how Hollows were really born?

_I wish it was_…

Things would be so much simpler if that were the case. The shinigami a hands-reach away from her would purify her spirit, sending her on to Soul Society. It would be so very easy for them to lose her—for _her_ to lose her—in the litter-strewn alleys of Rukongai; and she could wait, and wait, and wait until a flicker of orange out of the corner of her eye no longer made her breath catch, until she could look up at the crescent moon without thinking of that black blade gleaming under streetlights and cero, until she could close her eyes without wondering if he was still awake, somewhere. She would find her brother and things would go back to how they were all those years ago, and everyone would live happily ever after, just like in all of the stories.

Only, well… they wouldn't. Not really.

_Kurosaki-kun… _no matter how she felt about him, he was her friend. Her nakama. He would never want to fight her, none of them would. And what if, hidden behind a white mask, she saw claws slice through skin or tasted blood sliding down her throat? She couldn't hurt them, she _couldn't_.

And even if she _was_ purified and _did_ manage to hide away amongst the other wandering souls, to find her brother within the hundreds of districts without being found herself—what then?

They'd search for her, Orihime knew. There would be no forgetting for any of them. Even if she could, she'd never reject the memories of sewing with Ishida-kun, learning about her power alongside Sado-kun, meeting Renji-kun, growing stronger with Kuchiki-san, and Kurosaki-kun…

_Kurosaki-kun…_ The girl didn't look his way, her head bowing further and further down until her chin bumped against her neck. Once, she might have been able to forget him. Once, their ties had been Tatsuki-chan, a bloody afternoon, and the way she wanted to giggle every time she saw those furrows in his forehead and the sharp edges of his scowl.

Now—

For Ichigo, she was his nakama. For Orihime, he was everything and then some. If she rejected him, she'd be emptier than any Hollow. Her heart would always have a place for him, for five lifetimes or five thousand, as long as the moon hung in the night sky. And she could _never_ reject that.

And yet, she almost had mere moments ago, as assuredly as if she had used Tsubaki. She had tried to change their bonds, been so tempted to lean just a little farther forward and—no. She couldn't even think about that.

_I really am selfish, aren't I?_ She mused, closing her eyes tightly against the warning sting of coming tears._ Rangiku-san was wrong._

"Inoue?" The girl bit back a startled squeak, having lost herself so deeply in her thoughts that she had almost forgotten that the very object of her affection was little more than a foot away. She twisted around to see his trademark scowl deeper, leveled at her and_ angry_. She wasn't surprised—she would have been furious if she had been him—but she couldn't help how she quickly dipped her head again, masking her wet eyes with loose skeins or caramel—her hairpins gleamed from the side of the futon.

Although she couldn't see it, the fury in his frown grew even greater at her actions. But she could hear the deep, slow breath he took, the unspoken plea for patience. "What were you saying earlier?"

"Eh?" Once again startled and briefly shaken from her misery, she blinked up at him in undiluted confusion. His frown was quickly shaped into a slight smile—forced, yes, but the encouragement in it was sincere, nothing like the expression he had worn that day in july—a few of the creases in his forehead smoothing out while the corners of his eyes crinkled just a bit. She found herself smiling back at him before reality returned to her, and even then she was able to push back the sorrow for this moment.

"About the ogre?"

"Before that."

"Well," she straightened, her head tilting back as she turned to face the stars strewn haphazardly over the darkness of this new world. "I was trying to see if the sky was the same."

"The same?" It was Ichigo's turn to be stumped, and his classmate found herself smiling still at his confusion. "As what?"

"The one at home, and Soul Society!" She pushed herself off the ground, clambering to her feet in a whirl of white and caramel. The Vaizord couldn't help but remember her in the full uniform of a shinigami, rather than just the undergarment, and wished they had given her that instead. She had worn white for far too long—besides, she looked even more amazing in black.

…_wait, what?!_

Unaware of the unusual thoughts running through his head, Orihime padded up to the window and pressed her hands against the clear surface with puppy-like eagerness, the tip of her nose half an inch away from the false glass. Curious in spite of his notorious impatience with all things astrological, the orangette stood as well and trailed a few steps behind her.

"See that?" Bouncing up onto the very tips of her toes, the girl pointed up at a particularly bright star, just left of being directly in the center of their patch of sky. "That's _tenteisei, _the north star! And down there—" she traced out a scattering of stars, starting at a few flickering spots of brightness that could be occasionally be glimpsed beyond the forest that surrounded the Realm, but stretching upwards and across the darkness, "—that's _ryuuza_, the dragon, although you can't see it all right now since—oh!"

Her hands clapped over her mouth loudly enough for Ichigo to wince, but in her sudden panic Orihime seemed oblivious to pain. "I'm so sorry, Kurosaki-kun! I forgot!"

The creases in the forehead of the shinigami deepened as he favored his classmate with an expression that, if a picture could say a thousand words, would be able to sum up his feelings with two. "About what?"

"You don't like things like horoscopes and haunted houses and Kanonji-san's show, right?" She asked him, and he thought back to that day—how many lifetimes ago?—when he had walked through the classroom door to find her with her fingers crooked, arms crossed, and beaming at him in such a way that he couldn't help but want to run and run and not even slow down until he reached Antarctica, if even then. "Tatsuki-san told me, and you said—"

"I said it was no big deal," he cut her off with a shrug, "so don't apologize. Besides, you're explaining this _much_ better than Yuzu ever did."

She blushed, but would not meet his gaze. Instead, the bright-haired girl turned back to the window, and when she spoke again, her voice had softened to almost a whisper. "Your sisters miss you."

"Yeah," he said, so that they wouldn't sink into silence again, so that he could hear the word and not think about the sweetness of her scent, the warmth of her presence, the nearness of her hand to his after so long and so much—_hey, wait a second…_

"What makes you say that?"

"Oh!" He could only blink in unadulterated confusion as her cheeks changed to a cherry hue—it was definitely better like that, no more almost white in the night—and her hands flittered around in a frantic blur. "Um—you see, it's not that—your hand!"

One arm flailed in the general direction of Ichigo's side, almost brushing his shoulder—without thinking, he snatched it out of the air, fingers clasping and entangling, warm palm pressed against warm palm. It took both of them several long, long moments of silently gaping at their intertwined digits before realization struck them in a manner not unlike a drunken Jidanbo's axes.

"When I went to—to heal your hand," she continued, breathing deeply and still giving Renji's hair competition, after they had yanked their hands apart, "Yuzu-chan and Karin-chan were sleeping right next to your bed and—"

"Wait." Ichigo didn't meet her gaze, didn't even look away from his own hand, which now touched only the smooth floorboards between the classmates. "That was the night you were kidnapped."

"H-hai," was the stammered reply to a question that hadn't been asked, and for a moment all that could be heard was the whispering of her hair as she looked down at her lap. She drew in as much air as she could in a few too-short heartbeats, to inflate her battered courage. "I—"

"Don't talk about it."

Orihime bowed her head deeper; of course he didn't want to hear it, who would? If only she'd been stronger, she could have—

"Yet, don't talk about it _yet_!" The orangette amended hastily, seeing the slump of her shoulders even if her face was hidden. He didn't want to hear her apologize for something he _knew_ wasn't her fault, no matter what her captors had tricked and trapped her into believing. "When we get home, I want to hear whatever you feel ready to say. Now, though…"

The shinigami faltered, the torrent of words slowing to an unsteady drip before finally tapering off altogether. What _did_ he want now?

_To go home, obviously. _But that wouldn't be for weeks yet, no matter if they found some way to convince the Royal Guards to let her go peacefully or beat them all to a bloody pulp—according to the captains, they would have to wait out the month before they could safely open the gate again.

And the mere thought of answering with that that called up a mental picture of the way his companion would turn away again or fake a smile, apologize—he could repeat it to her a thousand times, until old age had driven them both to permanently make their homes in the Soul Society, and she would still struggle to believe him. Of course, that wouldn't stop him from telling her anyways, when this was over and they were back under the human world's sun, walking to school to deal with another day of Tatsuki and Keigo and Chizuru and all of them.

Was _that_ what he wanted, for her to go back to how she'd been before? _Before what?_

Ever since she had hurled herself in front of her Hollowfied brother, he had come to realize that Tatsuki's friend; the cheerful girl with the good grades, clumsy enthusiasm, and overactive imagination… she was so much more than that. He hadn't known her back then. Even now, he wasn't sure he did—only that he should. That he _would_, no matter who he had to fight so that he'd have the chance.

_I want…_

"Now," he repeated, his hand still feeling oddly warm as he raised a finger to tap against the translucent pane. There was a bright, bright star on the other side, almost seeming within grasping distance. "I want to know what that one is."

-----

A/N: Urg. Looking up all of that star information and figuring out which ones they'd be able to see reminded me of why astrophysics gave me such a headache when I took it in high school.


	3. Minnow & The Trout

"Inoue—hey, slow down!"

"Hurry, Kurosaki-kun, or we'll miss it!"

The floorboards creaked as two pairs of sandaled feet beat down on them, each teasing out a distinctive rhythm to call their own. One was quick and light, full of skips and twirls; the other slightly slower and more purposeful, but Ichigo couldn't hold back just a little bit of a swing in his step as he followed after his nakama.

_It's hard to believe she's the only one of us without a speed technique._ The teen shook his head bemusedly as she skidded her way around the next corner, and picked up his own pace slightly until she was in sight again. He'd have to teach her when they got back, even if the thought of a shunpoing Orihime brought to mind explosions, confused calls from Yokohama—if not Tokyo or Kyoto—about red dragonflies, and possibly the accidental destruction of multiple worlds.

Then again, Yachiru knew shunpo, and Soul Society didn't seem to have been _too_ traumatized by her presence. And it wasn't a smoking crater yet, either, as far as he could tell. That had to be a good sign… right?

A squeak caught his attention, dragging him out of his daze just in time to see the brunette sliding across the sanded and polished wood again, this time with her arms pinwheeling in a frantic attempt to grasp the balance that had clearly fallen far out of her reach. He leapt forward, slipping into shunpo without a thought—

"Ho! Tanabata!" the admonishment was tapered with a hint of a laugh, as the speaker grabbed the shoulders of the accident-prone girl and kept her from plunging head over heels. "If you hurry too much, you will tumble down!"

The substitute shinigami halted almost directly between the newcomer and the—now somewhat disheveled—human, glaring at the former until the latter had been released with clear amusement on the part of the former. He didn't see the quick, nervous glance his friend aimed at his back, but he could easily hear the words she spoke in an attempt to diffuse the early tension.

"I'm so sorry, Hikifune-san!" A rustling, he suspected the healer was bowing to add to her respectful tone—_more than these Guards deserve_. The formality faded away as she straightened and tittered, "thank you for stopping me, though! I'm really clumsy, but I'll be more careful, I promise!"

Her voice was just a little louder than it usually would have been, and Ichigo cautiously turned his head, just enough to put Orihime in the corner of his eye without taking his gaze off of someone that he could easily come to see as an enemy.

She was flushed still, but the innocent delight from their haphazard race was fleeting. It was as if Ichigo's hands were wrapped around her neck, rather than themselves. His stomach curled in on itself at the thought, and he forced himself to unclench his fists. He did not, however, take a step back, despite the fact that he was close enough to both women that it was not only uncomfortable, but also downright rude. Orihime wasn't angry, not for his closeness, but the way his scent wrapped around her brought the red tinge in her cheeks to a full-fledged crimson blaze.

"There's no need for you to apologize," the Royal Guardian assured them with a smile. She took a step back, her head bobbing slightly in the other shinigami's direction, but he mulishly kept himself close to his nakama. "In fact, if you happen to stumble into any of those especially horrible vases in the next hall, the other Guards will probably grovel at your feet."

Ichigo sniggered before he could remind himself that this was the woman who was trying to take his nakama away. Screw her smiles, screw her apparent kindness, she knew what she was doing and so did he. Orihime might not realize how much he had always looked forward to hearing her "good morning, Kurosaki-kun!" every day at school, and how much he had missed it during his training and their time in Hueco Mundo, but there was no way in any world that he was going to stand for this.

"So," Hikifune continued, her tone still as amiable as ever even in the face of the substitute's renewed scowl. "Where were you two off to in such a rush? And so early!"

The orange-haired shinigami bristled. "None of your—"

"I wanted to see the sunrise," the healer explained hastily, her gaze flickering from her crush to the leader of the strongest of the shinigami divisions and back again.

"Well, then," the woman nodded to indicate the end of the hallway, which split off into two directions. "If you turn left up ahead, you should find yourself in one of the less-damaged gardens."

Both teens found themselves thinking back to the chaos of their arrival, when the entire Hueco Mundo group had dove headfirst into a battle that was already well-underway, all over the Royal Realm. The shinigami had made some slight effort, save the obvious exceptions, to not sent the entire place crashing down around them. But the others, particularly Ichigo and Grimmjow, hadn't had that degree of respect for the King and his home instilled in them yet—assuming they ever would, after the ultimatum that had been handed down to them without him ever so much as being in the same room.

The Vaizord clenched his fist._ That bastard…_

Hikifune continued, unaware that half of her audience had stopped paying attention. "It's where all of the Guards who think they're poets go when they want to torture the rest of us, and it has quite a nice view if you ignore a few trees that were knocked down during the fighting."

"Thank you so much!" Orihime chirped, bobbing into a polite—if rushed—bow before she bolted. Hikifune chuckled and shook her head, remembering a girl who had always fidgeted her way through officer's meetings. She could practically hear Hiyori telling her how much she looked like an old hag when she did that.

"Aren't you going to go with her?" She asked Ichigo, who had leaned unconsciously towards the direction his nakama was pelting off in but otherwise hadn't moved.

The younger shinigami didn't answer at first, his eyes tracking his classmate until the last strands of caramel had whisked around the corner. Only then did he fix his hardened glare upon the former member of the Gotei Thirteen."Stay away from Inoue."

"Excuse me?" She quirked an eyebrow curiously at him, but he could see it was merely for the sake of appearances. She wasn't trying too hard to hide it—even he could see that.

"What, are you going to tell me that you just happened to be here when we were?" He snorted, but there was little amusement in the sound. "Just in time to keep Inoue from falling, too?"

"I was actually looking for one of my subordinates." The woman informed him with a quirk of the eyebrow. "I'm not doing this because I wish to, Kurosaki-san. It is the only thing I can do."

He didn't even dignify that with an answer—not that she blamed him. A heartbeat, two, then the wind stirred Hikifune's neatly bound hair as the ryoka boy shunpoed after the faint squeaks that could be heard rather than footsteps, passing closely enough to brush against her shoulder.

The captain shook her head: such stubbornness! But the bemusement was only for show, and she found herself staring at the now-empty hall, her shoulders sloped beneath a burden even she couldn't truly see. _What else did I expect? Especially after the King…_

The King. Her duty. She straightened, jerking her chin up; for the children's own sake as much as the safety of her charge, she did as she was bade. And for the one who, without even knowing, stood to lose the most should she fail.

They were humans. Human children, at that, and even their shinigami nakama could barely be called more than weaned babes compared to the one who had given Hikifune her orders. It was for their own good—they'd realize that someday, she was sure of it. And if they didn't, well, the facts remained the same…

It was what had to be done.

She strode back down the corridor. "Your highness!"

-------

By the time he slowed to a stop, grass bent beneath his sandals, gleaming with streaks of dew in the pre-dawn light. He could only see Orihime's back and the waves of bright caramel hair that cascaded down it, a few strands here and there hanging off her shoulders to _just_ brush the tallest of the emerald blades.

"I missed the grass," she murmured before he could so much as open his mouth. She could have been talking to herself, to the birds just beginning to rouse from their slumber, or to the wind as easily as to him. "It's silly, isn't it? I missed the grass and the stars and the moon being the right way around."

"Miss," he corrected, "all of it may look the same, but it's not."

She made a sound that may have been agreement. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe she hadn't even heard what he said. The sun had yet to peek above the horizon, but the sky was aflame already, and the colors leapt down to play in the shine of her hair, the folds of her dress, and the arm hanging limply off of one knee as she squatted there, carefully so as not to let the kosode slip down her thighs. Her fingers curled slightly, less than an inch away from the damp grass—if she stretched them out, or moved her arm a bit, she could pluck one of the blades

He steered his thoughts firmly away from _those_ kinds of thoughts, the type that he shouldn't have even been thinking about thinking about when it came to his nakama, before speaking again. "I miss them too."

"Kurosaki-kun?" It was whispered, but he heard it above the birdsong and wind and even the suddenly deafening thud of his heartbeat.

"Yeah?" His own voice, had he bothered to think about it, was as soft as hers had been. He hadn't made any effort to do so—it had just slipped out that way. Around her, he couldn't help it… he wasn't sure if she was strong or fragile or both or neither, but he'd _never_ risk finding out.

"Please…" She still didn't turn to look at him. "Don't fight. Not for me."

He opened his mouth to deny it, to tell her to stop being an idiot and listen to herself, but memory cut him off. Widened eyes with dark shadows, trembling hands, tears shining beyond a golden veil.

"_So please… don't get yourself hurt anymore…"_

The sun rose then, but even he hadn't been blinking to adjust to the sudden brightness he wouldn't have seen the tears—her eyes were closed, her head bowed. And he turned away, gritting his teeth and wanting nothing more than to hit something, someone—Hikifune, his Hollow, himself. They had missed the light… but neither could look at it, even if they hadn't.

Finally, Ichigo took a steadying breath. "In—"

"ITSYGOOOOOO!"

He could _swear_ he heard the tension in the atmosphere crack when a familiar green blur smacked into him, wrapping misleadingly tiny arms around his waist with more strength than she probably had in her ressurecion. _No, wait, that was my ribs. Ow…_

"Kurosaki-kun!" Startled out of the seriousness of the moment, Orihime clambered to her feet and hurried over to him. "What—"

"Morning, Icchy!" Another blur, this one pink and bouncing—_who the fuck was stupid enough to give them _sugar,_ oh crap this won't end well_—squealed as it joined the first, jumping up and down on the orangette's poor beaten body a few times before deciding to run around in circles around them. "Morning, Bururun!"

"Y-Yachiru-chan?" Orihime stammered as she recognized that particular shade of fuchsia. Her eyes bulged slightly as she dropped her gaze to where the second newcomer was still attempting to break the hapless Vaizord in half. "Nel-chan?"

"Owihime-chan!" Much to her surprise, the caramel-haired girl found herself the next victim of the former Espada's glomp. Although the lack of distance meant the Nel couldn't build up as much speed as she had when tackling Ichigo, it was still more than enough to knock the human down to the ground. Admittedly, that wasn't too hard, especially considering the sheer astonishment the action elicited—Orihime had grown fond of the little Arrancar during their brief time together, but she'd had no idea that the feelings had been mutual. After a moment of gaping, she managed to fold her legs under her, not caring about the grass stains as she returned the hug with one of her own.

The one who had brought them together rubbed his head dazedly, trying to remember how to breathe until he suddenly found himself looking at a pair of too close for comfort, upside-down eyes. "HIYA ICCHY!"

Way_ too close_, he amended with a barely-restrained wince. The vice-captain's breath smelled like the retirement fund of an _extremely_ successful dentist.

"What are you two doing?" He asked, rather than cursing the heavens as he wanted. "Weren't you keeping an eye on Don-what's-his-mask and the other Hollows?"

"We're pwaying eternal hide-and-seek!" Nel chirped. "Gwimmjow-sama's weally weally good at being da seeker, and the chaser too! He let Nel be as matho-kithtic as Nel wants!"

Orihime's forehead wrinkled, just a little, as she tried to puzzle through the greenette's lisp. "Matho…maso… masochistic?"

The littlest Arrancar blinked. "Dat's what Nell saided."

"Oh." The brunette found herself blinking as well, unsure of exactly what to say in such a situation. A rare silence ensued that was, of course, broken by a young voice.

"Awe you okay? Nell can gwope her thwoat dick, that always makeses lots and lots and lots of dwool come out!"

Ichigo quickly cleared his throat. "So, you were playing hide-and-seek, and what? Grimmjow didn't find you?"

"He did," Yachiru squealed, tugging on his sleeve happily to regain his attention. "And now we're seeking!"

"We awweady gots Gwimmjow-sama," Nell told the humans gleefully. "And Pesche and Dondochakka and Gantenbainne-sama too! But we haven't finded Banana-chan yet…"

Cue the blinks again. "Who?"

"Banana-chan," the pink-haired shinigami repeated, not in the least perturbed by the utter confusion her audience was displaying.

"…Who?" The Vaizord asked again after digging through the memories of every time he had so much as gone to the bathroom in Soul Society, and failing to come up with anyone who could fit that description. Well, other than Mayuri's new hat, but she couldn't imagine the mad scientist parting with it long enough to let someone hide it, much less allow it to be used in a game involving two of the most destructive beings ever to bounce off the walls in any world.

"Banana-san!"

A sigh. "Whatever."

"YAY!" Ichigo found his head hitting the ground—hard—as the pint-sized powerhouses swarmed him again. "Thanks, Icchy!"

_Thanks? _He found himself scowling. _For what? What do they think I'm getting myself into?_

"You'll help too, right Bururun?"

"Okay!" Orihime nodded eagerly, then hesitated. "Wait—are there going to be any giant mouse robots from space?"

"What's a wobot?"

"I guess that's a no…" The caramel-haired girl couldn't hide a slight pout as she clambered to her feet, but quickly returned to her usual beaming self as she saluted the dynamic duo. "Don't worry, Yachiru-chan, Nell-chan, you can count on me!"

_Scratch the think…_ Ichigo gave a little mental moan as he tried very, very hard not to walk over to the nearest tree and start banging his head against it.

But… she looked happy.

Her smile was the closest to real that he had seen it since Hikifune's declaration. No—since his Hollow killed Ulquiorra.

Her smiles since had been tinged with guilt, even now… but at least the innocence of the elderly children had distracted her, if only for a few moments. He couldn't do it—he shoved down the twinge in his chest—but at least someone could.

_Zaraki wouldn't cut off too many of my limbs if I tricked Yachiru into coming to Karakura every once in a while, would he? Probably_, he knew. _But it'll be worth it._

"Ne, Itsygo?"

"Yeah?"

"Why is the sky bleeding?"

That oddly light feeling in his chest turned to the ugly squeeze of a clenched fist as he whirled, one hand already reaching that cloth-wrapped handle behind him while the other pulled Nell behind him as he stepped back towards the second half of their group, his eyes scanning the clouds for any sign of cracks or darkness or claws and masks among the red-drenched—wait.

Cautiously, he glanced down at the now nervous green-headed child. "Are you talking about the sunrise?"

"Sunwises? Fwom what? Isn't it in da dome?"

He wondered; did she ever leave Hueco Mundo after becoming an Arrancar? Would she remember now if she had?

It was Orihime who began the explanation, with the air of the gentle teacher that he knew she could become, given the chance. "There is none. Here, it's—"

"Boring!" Yachiru cut in, tugging insistently on the human's colorless sleeve. "Come on, Bururun, Icchy, Uma-chan, we've got to find Banana-chan!"

"I thought Nell-chan's ressureccion was a goat." The brunette found herself murmuring as she and Ichigo were dragged off by their diminutive allies. "Not a horse."

Despite one arm in the process of being yanked out of its socket, Ichigo managed a shrug. "Same here."

But as they were tugged away, he couldn't help but think back to the request she had made of him, and wonder…

_Inoue… do you _want_ to get away from us?_

_From me?_

------

"BANANA-CHAN!"

"Banana-chan?"

"Banana-chaaaaaan!"

"BANA—hey, Icchy!"

He rolled his eyes, but knew from experience that it was better not to provoke the demon of the Eleventh. "OI!"

"Icchy's silly, isn't he?" Yachiru asked the other girls with a giggle. "How does he expect Banana-chan to know who he's talking to unless he says his name?"

Nell nodded so fervently Ichigo was surprised her neck didn't snap, and attributed it to her hierro. "Itsygo, you gots to say his name!"

"Fine," Ichigo rolled his eyes. "Oi, _Banana-chan! _Happy?"

"Nope!" The pinkette chirped, looking every inch the liar with her toothy grin and bouncing steps. "We still haven't found Banana-chan, and there's no candy!"

"What does candy have to do with anything?"

She froze from where she had been skipping circles around him, and he found himself paling as she flipped her head back and upside-down to glare at him. He froze, unable to anything but realize that he might not make it to the end of the day—and if he did, he might wish he hadn't.

"It has to do with everything." Her voice was low, menacing, and capable of making even the usually-suici—er, _courageous_ substitute want to run home and dive under his covers. "_Everything_."

"Right," he nodded frantically; trying not to think back to that time his father had blown up the kitchen right after Yuzu had finished cooking an obscenely complicated feast of a dinner to celebrate Ichigo's scores on his mid-terms. There had been something in his usually calmer sisters' eyes that reminded him much too much of the expression the vice-captain was wearing now. "Everything; got it!"

"Good boy!" She jumped onto his shoulder before he could blink, and patted him on the head. "We'll get you a treat when we find the candy!"

For once in his life, the Vaizord considered purposefully seeking out Zaraki Kenpachi. In the end, the conservation of his life won out over his sanity, although he kept the idea in mind just in case they started singing again._ If I ever find out who taught Nell 'The Song That Never Ends', I'm going to shove Zangetsu—_

**Keep me out of **_**there**_**, King! Unless it was someone like that big-breasted friend of yours…**

He glanced at Orihime, then quickly away, unsure of why exactly his face was burning as hot as it was but knowing that a certain inner Hollow was going to regret it if he opened his mouth again. Such as he was currently doing, what with all of the maniacal cackling and all.

"BANANA-CHAN!"

Ichigo flinched, distracted from his graphic imaginings by the screaming from less than two inches away from his ear. _How can someone that tiny have such huge lungs?_

"Banana-chan!" Orihime called next, in her mercifully softer voice. Although he wouldn't have minded so much if she had shouted…

"BANANA-CHAAAAAN!"

"Would you be quiet already?"

The orangette blinked. Had he said that out loud? Funny, he'd thought his mouth was higher up than that…

"BANANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-CHAN!"

He dove to the side, almost crashing into the wall in his haste to avoid the pinkandgreen—no, not pink-and-green, they were moving too fast to make out the individual colors—blur that _blasted_ through the space he'd been standing in less than a half a second beforehand. And there was a scorch mark there, too—_were they trying to kill me?!_

…_on second thought, I don't want to know._

There was a hand on his arm, then, and he wasn't sure whether it was a safer detail to focus on or not—he wasn't sure of anything with her these days, only that what he had once thought he known was probably the exact opposite—

"Thanks, Inoue, y…" He trailed off as the brunette helped him straighten up, recalling an oddly warm softness to his impact followed by a suspiciously "oof!"-like thud. "Wait, did I hit you?!"

Before she could answer, their attention was drawn back to the deceptively diminutive members of the group… all three of them. 'Banana-chan', Ichigo couldn't help but snicker upon discovering, was the shortest one. He may have worn a shinigami's shihakusho just as Yachiru did, but the Vaizord knew he would be considerably less afraid of this newcomer than his fellow Gaurdians—for what else could a shinigami in the Royal Realm be, even one so short?—and indeed, the hyperactive fukutaichou.

But then again, most of the seireitei was more afraid of the pinkette than her adoptive father, Mayuri, and Soi-Fon _combined_. At least they would probably remain decidedly separate and as far away from each other as possible. Yachiru, however, was ridiculously energetic even without candy.

_With it…_ he shuddered. It was best not to think about that. Although it was infinitely more preferable to contemplating the way that Orihime's fingers still lightly brushed the back of his hand every few moments.

It was lightly enough to seem an accident—he told himself it was. A recurring accident, but an accident nonetheless. He wondered if she even noticed. She hadn't met his eyes since they had been dragged out of the library, though, so he wasn't about to ask.

Besides, standing there, his skin tingling whenever it met hers, surrounded by that curious mix of scents that was uniquely _hers_… it was nice. He wasn't sure about a lot of things, especially not during the last few days, but he knew he didn't want this moment to end.

However, nothing was eternal. Not humans, not shinigami, and definitely not the plunge of a single grain of sand through an hourglass.

"Ge'ovv!" They heard the little boy yelp, his voice muffled by the fact that Nell was sitting on his face. His arms flailed helplessly and thwacked Yachiru multiple times, which only caused her to giggle.

"Should we do something?" Ichigo finally asked in an aside to his nakama, who bit her lip worriedly. Both of them were incredibly reckless, protective, and borderline suicidal in their determination to protect others. However, both of them also knew the two smaller girls well enough to know exactly what they were capable of.

Fortunately, 'Banana-chan' managed to squirm free of his captors at that moment, and run for his life down the hallway, forgetting even to use shunpo in his unadulterated terror. His playmates—apparently whether he liked it or not—took off after him.

"…You know..." Orihime said slowly, backing away from the sounds of screaming and expensive objects smashing—not to mention an explosion or two. "I was wondering if the others are up yet."

"They were going to check out the archives today," the orangette told her quickly. "We've been dragged around shouting for a few hours, the entire Royal Realm's probably up by now, so we should see if anyone's there. We can do some research, try to figure out a way to talk some sense into those Guards before we have to bash it in."

He saw her eyes flash with that same sorrow as earlier, but before she could repeat her earlier plea he had taken a leaf out of Banana-chan's book and bolted. She had no choice but to follow him before she ended up lost—of course, he would have turned back for her had she lagged in trailing him, but that wasn't what she wanted. She didn't want to see his back anymore.

And yet, even if they did save her regardless of her pleas, she had a horrible feeling that she'd never see anything else again. At least, not on the battlefield

_Kurosaki-kun… why can't I ever protect you?_

------

"What about a gigai?"

Chad glanced up at the speaker, gaze questioning under his dark hair. "She's not dead."

Renji shrugged from where he leaned against the side of a shelf. A book dangled almost casually from one hand; open but forgotten in the pursuit of this new idea. "I know, but—"

"And she won't be anytime soon," His oldest friend cut him off, fists clenched and eyes steely.

If they failed, they had been informed that only Orihime's spirit would be left behind—her physical body would be sent back to the world of the living with them. There would be a funeral, with some story about a car accident, or maybe an illness. A few memories modified, a computer network or two hacked, and who was to say that she hadn't held on in the hospital for nearly a week, more than long enough for any awkward questions to have been answered.

And afterwards… she wouldn't be able to go back to her life, not when all that was left was ashes and bones.

"_A clean break,"_ Hikifune had told them before leaving the day before, her eyes somewhere far away in time and space. _"It's better for everyone involved."_

"It's not her body that's the problem." Ishida summarized, before the grim determination in Rukia's voice could lower the almost-peaceful mood that had previously settled over the group.

"I meant one of Urahara's." At that, they all turned to Renji, thoughts whirling faster as he continued. "You know, like the one he stuck Ru—OW! RUKIA!"

"Why would you want to put Orihime in one of those?!" The dark-haired shinigami yanked on his ear again, eliciting another yelp along with a stream of curses aimed towards her and her ancestors—both real and adopted—until she cut him off with a kick that had all of the other males wincing sympathetically.

"They're after her because of her power, right?" The redhead gritted his teeth, bracing himself for another attack from his deceptively diminutive nakama. When it never came, he sagged ever so slightly in relief and continued in a far more relaxed tone. "So if she's just a normal human, maybe they'll let her go!"

Orihime's fingers twitched, aching to reach up and reassure themselves that there was still smooth plastic waiting just out of sight, with a warmth as familiar as her own awaiting just beneath the surface—that's what it was, after all—and the gentle bickering of her fairies always in the back of her mind, just soft enough for her to only hear the noise rather than the words, a constant soothing undertone to the rest of the world that had always been there, even if she hadn't noticed it until that fateful day.

A normal human?

"Not a chance." It was Ichigo's snarl, yet again, that snapped her from her reverie, bringing her heartbeat to skipping and her breath to catching. She twisted around, leaning over slightly and resting her weight on one arm as she stared at her crush. He kept his gaze centered squarely on Renji, but the way he held himself, the slight turn of his head—it was too easy to tell herself he was keeping her in the corner of his eye. "Why the hell should she have to give up anything else because of Aizen's scheming?"

"I'm just saying it's an option!" The redhead snapped. "The important thing is that she goes back with us, isn't it? So unless you have a better idea—"

"It might work for a while," Ishida's voice was quiet, thoughtful, but the sheen of his glasses hid the eyes behind them. "But what happens when Inoue-san… when all of us pass on? Kuchiki-san was able to recover from her gigai, after all."

"It wouldn't be permanent," Rukia was scowling, now, no longer at Renji but at her own memories, a past where a single dodge had come to so much. Maybe, if she had been a little faster, a little stronger, a little more decisive, none of this would have happened. "Even if she was stuck in it for the rest of her life."

And maybe, a hated little voice whispered from the shadows of her inner world, that life would have been cut short, merged with so many others into Aizen's lockpick. Maybe she wouldn't even have made it that long, maybe Ichigo's recognition of her brother had been what saved her that night, so long ago.

"What would happen afterwards?" Orihime heard herself ask, as if from afar. "Maybe… maybe they'd forget; if I died of old age?"

Another polite lie, an impossible hope, one she wished she could take back the moment before it spilled from her mouth. But it was out, now, and beyond even her abilities. It hung heavily in the air, smoke that seared her lungs and blurred her eyes. The silence was long, but too informative for any of their sakes.

"Maybe," Chad rumbled after what seemed to be years.

"We'll keep it in mind," the scorn in Rukia's voice made it clear that, no matter how much merit the idea would have had, she couldn't stand the thought of tearing her friend away from abilities that she had worked so hard, trained so long, suffered so much to gain. It would be the absolute last resort, if even that.

_But even if they did,_ the human girl's heart tightened, as it always did when that traitorous hiss arose from the back of her mind. _Would I? _Should_ I?_

Rukia, she knew, had been able to see spirits while in the reishi-less gigai. Uryu had even drawn them to him while he'd lacked his own powers. She didn't want to have to watch their backs as they ran off to fight without her, or even _because_ of her.

Since they had reunited in Hueco Mundo, none of the ryoka had strayed far from one another. They had wanted those they had come to see as friends, family even, to be always within their sight. And when they couldn't, they _had_ to know where the others were, where they were going, when they thought they'd be back. The overwhelming reiatsu all around them, so many, so strong, so close, put them on edge—they could still sense each other, still pick the feeling that was purely _him_ and _her_ and _us_ from amongst the snarl of ribbons, those little glimpses of white and familiar scents amidst the all-encompassing crimson—made them want to rely less on their spiritual senses and more on their eyes and ears and bare hands.

Ever since the group had reunited—no, ever since the last of Ulquiorra's ashes had scattered to the winds—she had always been within five feet of at least two of her nakama, save for the hours immediately after the last battle. But they had all been exhausted, then, and facing down a blood-splattered Captain of the Fourth Division wasn't something undertaken lightly even at the best of times. Hence why Unohana had made sure to knock several of the more… brash ryoka out before she 'asked'.

Ichigo in particular had glued himself to Orihime's side, only letting her out of sight when she went to the bathroom. Rukia had followed her in, though, claiming that she had to go as well, but all three of them had been painfully aware of just how terrible a lie that was. None of them said anything about it, of course, it had been one of those polite little lies that were told for the sake of appearances; _"I don't mind waiting"_, _"you're looking better than ever"_, _"you're the only one for me"_.

She wasn't sure how she felt about their protectiveness—she hated to be a burden, but the way that she was surrounded by Kurosaki-kun's scent, by all of theirs, all day… she felt too light-headed to complain. Until, of course, they had come to the Archives and reality had come crashing back down—_this might be the end._

So be it, then. At least she'd be able to spend some time with him, with them, before they were separated yet again, more time than Ulquiorra had given her a lifetime ago. And she could talk at them this time, not at them, she didn't have to leave notes and follow a few steps behind, wishing beyond all reason that they would turn around and see her and pull her back into the light—

"Inoue?" He had leaned forward, legs shifting slightly on the polished floorboards until he faced her straight on. There was a fire in his eyes, a hint of steel, power and determination and the sharpest edge of a blade. They were so close, a mere two or three feet apart…

Rukia was the only one who noticed the way Ichigo's hands twitched towards the brunette's, curling slightly over air before pulling back. He continued, and she wondered if even he had realized it. "You're coming back with us. We're not going to let them get away with it."

_No matter what you say._

The others all nodded, until—

"Rukia," Renji hesitated, unsure of exactly how to best phrase his rather delicate question, "what the hell are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" She didn't even bother to lift her head, and her eyes followed the blur of the pencil in her hand as it _skritch_ed against the sketchbook. Her redheaded friend craned his neck slightly to peer over her shoulder, mostly out of habit due to her diminutive stature rather than any actual need to… and almost before any of them could so much as blink, was on the floor, clutching his sides and cackling not unlike Zaraki would have if Ichigo had ever dropped by and demanded a fight to the death.

Or like the man sounded at that very moment, as he exchanged blows with a particularly bloodthirsty member of the Royal Guards, while their colleagues looked on with exasperation, bemusement, and the slight worry of _if they destroy another lily Hikifune-taichou is going to _incinerate_ them, should I start running away now or wait until they tick off Unohana-taichou as well?_

Back in the Archives, similar thoughts were running through the heads of half of the ryoka as they watched their redheaded compatriot snigger, oblivious to the aura of doom that was about to—the group shared a wince at Renji's yowl of pain, but didn't dare anything more… none of them wanted to be in his place, after all.

"DAMNIT RUKIA!" The vice-captain growled as he struggled to sit up, one hand rubbing the brand new lump on his skull. "Stop doing that!"

Rather than listen to her friend, the dark-haired girl bashed him over his head with her sketchbook again. And again. And then, with bellowing added in for a bit of variety, _again_. "Then why don't you stop being such a—"

"Kuchiki-san," Ishida began cautiously, knowing he _should_ probably stop them but not entirely fond of the being prematurely killed and passed on by a shinigami he had helped to rescue. "Perhaps—"

"HAH!"

"Give that back!"

"Not a chance!" The redhead gave an audible snort as he held his prize up and out of his more vertically-challenged nakama's reach. She jumped up, trying to reach it, only for him to lift it higher.

"Abarai…" The Quincy tried again, only to be cut off by the crash that was the vice-captain being tackled back into the shelves behind him by his deceptively tiny comrade. The innocent bystanders quickly sweatdropped and backed away to avoid the priceless ancient tomes that were sent flying in the ensuing scuffle.

"OW! HEY, WATCH THE HAIR!"

"ALL'S FAIR IN—OW! WHAT THE HECK?!"

"YOU PULL MINE, I PULL YO—OOOOOOOW!"

"We should probably give them some space." Chad commented drily, prompting a quick nod from Orihime; the two of them had spent enough time with at least half of the dynamic duo to know how… enthusiastic they could be.

Ishida let out a reluctant sigh before acquiescing; taking another look to make sure that the area the shinigami were squabbling in was one that they had already at least glanced through.

"OI!" Ichigo _roared, _startling the entire group into gaping at him. Chad's eyes were visible beneath his thick mane, wide and white. Orihime, who was the closest, squeaked and fell over, but before he could do more than slide a half a foot towards her she had popped back upwards, slightly flushed and beaming brightly, just as she always was when he wanted to worry over her.

Damnit, he wished she'd let them actually see her. The _real_ her… he wanted her to smile because she was really, truly happy—not because she wanted them to be. He'd gotten a glimpse, in those pre-morning hours… the briefest slip, irrevocably etched into his mind by the strange starlight, that made his thoughts whirl in directions that were better left alone.

But one thing was for sure: he'd convince her to let them—him—in, _after_ they'd brought her home. He could think about this then, he reminded himself, all of it.

"We don't have time for this," the orangette went on in a far quieter tone, but the terseness remained. "They said they'd open the gate again on the thirty-first, right? Halloween? So we've got—" he didn't even pause to recall the calculations, so often had they come to mind beneath the stars, checking and rechecking and hoping for a leap day, screw the year and season, it wasn't long enough— "sixteen days to go through _all_ of this."

He waved a hand at the thousands, millions, maybe even _billions_, of pages around them, the leather covers of books and frayed edges of scrolls, preserved beyond the lives of their authors by some strange technique not shared with the living. "So either get back to work or get the hell out!"

"Kurosaki!" Ishida snapped, and the sound of Ichigo's mouth slamming shut seemed almost deafening in the silence that followed. The ryoka, brave enough to run into enemy territory—_twice!_—with nary a second thought, couldn't even work up the nerve to meet each others' eyes.

"Sorry," the substitute shinigami muttered after too long, his fingers twitching. He had no pockets in his shihakusho, but if he had he would have shoved his hands into them and scowled more than usual.

None of them spoke. Orihime's legs were curled up to her chest, the pages of the book that had been resting upon them crinkling slightly against her chest. She was looking down towards it, but not at it—surely she couldn't see the letters at that angle, much less read them. Renji and Rukia had moved away from each other, and were gathering up the fallen records in a sullen—or perhaps shamed?—silence. The Quincy's gaze was hidden behind his reflective glasses, but his head was still turned towards the orangette, who stalwartly refused to stop trying to set the floor on fire through the heat of his glare alone.

It was Chad, as soft-spoken but succinct as ever, who rent the silence. "We need a break."

Most of his friends whirled on him and began protesting almost immediately after the meaning of his statement thudded into them, worse than Zaraki's fist against their guts. It was impossible to make out what they were saying, only—

"I agree with Sado-kun," at barely more than a whisper, somehow that one voice still rose above the warring shouts of her fellows.

"Inoue…" Rukia began, torn between caution—even she was still on tiptoes around the former captive, remembering far too well the days of white walls and cleansing flame and _"please let them live, Yamamoto-soutaichou, let them go home"_—and that bold, brusque nature of hers that had—had it really only been a month ago?—driven her to grasp a tearful girl by the collar and yell at her for not holding a grudge against that damned shopkeeper. But her voice trailed off into silence, as she failed to find those _right_ words that had come so easily to her back then.

"We've been at this for hours," Chad continued into the suddenly still air, locking onto Ichigo's glare with his own understanding gaze. "If we don't take a break, someone's going to snap."

His eyes bored into those of his friend, until the orangette was forced to turn his scowl on the wall. Unfortunately for his rage, said wall didn't immediately dissolve into ash or even start to smoke, so there was no getting out of it. He folded his arms over his chest, trying very hard not to think about how similar to a pouting child he probably looked.

"We don't have time." It was all he could think of to say, they were right, but they should have been wrong, and they knew it and he knew it and—

Ishida pushed his glasses farther up his nose, ducking his head and shielding his gaze from theirs. "We never do."

Ten days, training to storm the city of the shinigami with a talking cat, awakening powers used once and trying to learn to talk to a _sword_. What was supposed to be four months cut down to less than half that time, sparring and sweating and sobbing to grow strong enough to keep a town and its people from being stolen away. She had been given six hours to say good-bye, and they had had a day before they plunged into hell after her. And now, two weeks to comb through over two millennia worth of records—or to simply treasure each others' presence, as they wouldn't be able to again if their esteemed hosts got their way.

_An impossible task,_ Rukia mused as she badgered Renji and Ichigo on their way out the door, drawing the recalcitrant Orihime in with Chad's encouragement. _But then again, so is everything else we do. And that's never stopped us before._

A stomach rumbled. "I wonder if they have any red bean paste?"

_It won't this time, either._

Another impossibility: normalcy in chaos that was their life. False normalcy, forced even… but the dark-haired shinigami was glad that the human girl had given it to them all the same. It was the least either of them could do.

"Hey," she paused, glancing back even as she shoved the others onward, frowning slightly at the single figure behind her. "Aren't you coming?"

"I should pick these up," the last proud Quincy explained, waving a hand at the scattered volumes. "We don't want the Royal Guard finding out what we're doing, after all."

"Assuming they don't already know."

"True," he acquiesced with a nod, "but I'd rather not risk it."

The shinigami shrugged, feigning indifference. She knew he wanted to keep working, to finish up whatever he had been on. "Just hurry up, okay? She'll get worried."

Ishida chuckled, but his amusement was just as false as her carelessness. "She always does, doesn't she?"

"Yeah," Rukia agreed with a sigh, and left him alone save for the stories of the worlds.

He picked a book up, opened it to let his eyes flick from carefully-penned word to word, but it wasn't until he had done this with almost a dozen of them that his eyes widened. _This is—_

-----

A/N: Nope, no comment here. XD


	4. The Night Will Go As Follows

A/N: Yes! Grimmjow! Also, some of the OC's in this chapter were mostly just because I love torturing Byakushi. If anyone's curious, they were his babysitters before they joined the Royal Guard.

------

Grimmjow Jeagerjaques was surrounded by shinigami.

He was also bored out of his mask.

In normal circumstances, the combination of two such states would have been, if not impossible, then _extremely_ short-lived. At the most it might have lasted the quarter of a second it would have taken him to draw Pantera and ram it through the nearest of the cocky bastards. Hell, he could skewer them barehanded in half that, he was the fucking Sexta Espada!

_Was_ being the key word. Or maybe not, since it wasn't like anyone had replaced him or banything. But then again, Aizen had formed the Espada, so… ah, screw it, he was the Sexta and if anyone argued he'd claw their eyes out.

Of course, it didn't look like he'd be doing much of that in the future. Hence why Grimmjow was in the middle of a division full of the strongest shinigami to ever live, and his sword was still firmly in its sheathe. He had been 'requested' to keep it there, what with him being a bloodthirsty psychopathic Hollow and all. Not that he'd have listened in most cases, but even he wasn't crazy enough to argue with that healer woman. Especially not when she was _smiling_ like that.

"Creepy bitch…"

"Grimmjow-kun?" Speak of the all-too literal devil. "Did you say something?"

"Er…" _Fuck._ "No?"

Several of the other bathrobe-wearers had turned to watch them, rather than the far bloodier and engaging—meaning that occasionally the audience had to dodge a misaimed blow or just plain run for their lives—show of Zaraki and a younger member of the Royal Guard sparring. They had been going at it for over a half an hour already, and the

Not to mention the ongoing halftime show of the latter's triplet sisters cheering him on, one of whom had settled into a spot directly behind Kuchiki Byakuya while her sisters _bounced_—there was no other way to describe it—into place on either side. The noble's expression remained as smoothly disdainful as ever, but the way he twitched whenever Zaraki's opponent pulled off an exceptionally skilled move.

Of course, he couldn't blame the bastard, seeing as each time that happened the sisters insisted on shrieking in his ear and hugging each other. Watching the prick attempt to discretely avoid being trapped in the center of their embraces had been hilarious for a while, but even that had started to get annoying after the first ten minutes.

Not to mention the way that they were squealing made the Arrancar want to cut out their voiceboxes. Or his ears, whichever made that damned _noise_ go away faster.

He almost wished that they were having another shrieking match now. But no, when he actually wanted them to be loud and distracting they were watching him as avidly as the rest of the damned nosy shinigami. Maybe he shouldn't have been so eager to get away from those brats after all…

"Grimmjow-kun? Are you feeling alright?"

Damnit, she was still there and she was still smiling at him, like he didn't know she was running through all of the ways she knew to eviscerate him with his own hair. No wonder half of the idiots gawking at them looked like they were being nostalgic, they'd probably gone through the same damn thing if the captain of the fourth was half as old as he'd been led to believe.

"I'm fine," he snarled, sliding hastily a few inches away on the section of rubble he had claimed for his lounging.

It had originally been a part of the roof, but there _was_ a reason why the Eleventh Division racked up the highest damages every time someone managed to convince them to actually do the reports that the other divisions were required to submit monthly. More often than not, that someone was the same one who was currently terrifying Grimmjow.

_He'll certainly fit in well with the rest of the Eleventh,_ Unohana mused with a slight widening to her smile after several more seconds of watching the Espada squirm. Finally, when it looked as if the mighty Sexta was close to either fainting or wetting his hakama, she took pity on him and relaxed her examination.

"If you're sure," she told the blue-haired Hollow sweetly before turning back to the scheduled entertainment. Predictably, neither combatant had noticed anything other than their opponent. The healer shook her head bemusedly; between the Kenpachi's bloodlust and Koinu's single-mindedness, she doubted that even that rather adorable sixty-story reptile monster in those "mu-bis" the living world was so fond of would be able to distract them at this point.

"Enthusiastic, aren't they?"

Unohana gave a neutral nod, not even bothering to glance at the newcomer. She could hear rustling and respectful murmuring; the King had clearly come with his bodyguard. Although she respectfully inclined her head towards that direction, her eyes remained locked on the two warriors. "He's improved."

"Well, it _has_ been three hundred years." Hikifune pointed out as she sat down beside her former comrade-in-arms, folding her legs gracefully beneath her. Despite the apparently casual slope of the shoulders and the way she leaned back slightly on her arms, her gaze lingered for a few moments on Grimmjow—or more accurately, on the sharp nails that irritably drummed against the sheathe holding his zanpakutou. If the lower-ranked of the duo noticed the straying of her colleagues' eyes, she chose to ignore it.

"Three hundred and seventeen," she murmured instead, and the other woman gave her a sidelong look, sharp and searching.

"You haven't changed at all, have you?" The Guardian mused with a slight shake of the head. "Not since the Academy."

"You're one to talk."

Unohana's words had been soft, but her companion's keen ears picked it up with ease, as she had known they would. "How are our kohai doing, by the way?"

"I'll ask Shunsui next time he's sober."

"In other words, they haven't changed either." Hikifune chuckled as they watched Koinu duck beneath the bladed arc of his taller opponents' swing. Both were at shikai—not that Zaraki had ever managed to have his sword at any other level—but the Guardian had restrained himself from using his zanpakutou's ability. It could have been out of fairness, or simple selfishness in wanting to challenge himself in a rare opportunity against the single warrior who had risen to captaincy without even knowing his blade's name.

"GO NIICHAN!" One of the girls literally _screamed_, causing Byakuya to visibly cringe and attempt to slide surreptitiously far, far away. Unfortunately, the triplet on his other side was positioned perfectly to cut him off, and when he bumped her she squealed and hugged him. The combatants ignored this completely in favor of pounding their swords together repeatedly.

Or Koinu could just be insane. It was better hidden in him than in his sisters, but both his past and present captain had long harbored suspicions. In fact, a few months after his promotion, his vice-captain had tried to trick him into getting a psychological evaluation.

"GO KEN-CHAN! GO GO GOOOOOOOO!"

"YETH, GO KEN-TSAN!"

Then again, compared to his opponent, he was the epitome of sane normalcy. Or at least, he had seemed to be before volunteering for a bout against the stir-crazy psychopath.

She sighed, and thought back to her own fukutaichou. She had been young, yes, but Hikifune had had _such_ high hopes for the girl. She had even started to see her as more of a daughter than a subordinate… and there, perhaps, had been the problem.

"You got attached again, didn't you?"

"Don't mistake fairness for favoritism." The healer's tone was uncharacteristically sharp, although only the Guardian heard it. "They're _children_, and they've been through too much already. Most of them were normal humans until few months ago."

"None of them were ever truly normal," Hikifune retorted, "it was only a matter of time."

"Before what, may I ask?" Unohana inquired, her voice colder than even the rowdiest members of the Eleventh had ever had the misfortune to hear. "And please keep your voice down."

"Very well." The scream of metal on metal pierced the brief silence that had followed those words, and after it had died away to be replaced by panting and the mad Kenpachi's laughter, the captain of the Royal Guard continued. "But you know what I meant. Besides, they'll find out soon enough… those records are no more hidden than any of the others. Young as they are, those children will try to save her any way they can, and find them."

"But what I wish to know," she lowered her voice slightly, "is why are you so intent on hiding what happened."

"It was two thousand years ago," restrained anger faded into a mild murmur, as the healers' eyes took on a certain nostalgic. They remained fixed on the battle, yet it was clear her mind could not have wandered farther away. "It has nothing to do with what is going on now, or it shouldn't."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Unohana stared at the other woman, directly at her for the first time since she had entered the Royal Realm chasing after Aizen with the others. Finally, she shook her head and rose fluidly from her seat.

"That," she began, slowly, incredulously, "is the most hypocritical statement I have _ever_ heard."

And with that, she came the closest to literally stomping off that most of those present had _ever_ seen her come, or ever wanted to again. Komamura with rabies, a smiling Mayuri… even a temporarily-insane Yamamoto rampaging around with his shikai out would have been preferable. Byakuya actually hesitated for a few seconds before taking her departure as an excuse to flee from the triplets, much to their obvious disappointment. Hikifune watched the end of the white haori vanish around the corner, and found herself frowning. But she shook her head—_it's the only way. I'm sorry, Retsu, but the mistake all those years ago wasn't what was done… it was that they stopped it._

Grimmjow chose that moment let out a rude snort and turned away from the brief spate of debating. Shinigami, he concluded, were as boring as fuck when you weren't fighting them.

He'd have to do something about that when they dragged him back to the seireitei along with them. The Sexta wondered if he could get Gantenbainne to stir up some trouble, maybe even get half of the captains furious at him.

Now _that _would be entertainment.

------

"Talk."

Ichigo blinked. "Huh?"

"You heard me. Talk," Rukia repeated, folding her arms with the air of one who would not be denied. "You've barely said anything since yesterday."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"How about the fact that you broke three pairs of chopsticks?" the Thirteen Division shinigami retorted. "And didn't even eat half a bowl of rice?"

The orangette scowled—who was she to lecture him like this?—but said nothing. A vein visibly throbbed in Rukia's forehead.

"It's been over a week, and I'm getting tired of dealing with you!" Her tone brooked no argument, but the substitute found himself furious enough to risk being frozen alive anyways. "Start talking. _Now_."

"What, do you think I should make jokes about this?" He gestured around him, at the wall scrolls and sliding doors and peaceful serenity of the place that could become their nakama's new prison. "You think I should act like everything's normal? That it's fine? It's not!"

His fist hit something, then continued onwards with a sound that was decidedly Not Good—he opened his eyes to see that, surprisingly enough, he hadn't punched through the wall—just one of the paper screen doors. The orangette stared at the rip blankly for a long moment before leaning his head against the wooden frame. His voice, when he spoke again, was quiet but bitter. "No wonder she's terrified of me."

"What are you…" the dark-haired noble trailed off, her eyes widening slightly as she gazed at the back of his head. "Inoue?"

"No, Ururu," was his surprisingly sarcastic retort.

"She's not afraid of you..." Rukia sucked in a breath as realization hit her. "Your Inner Hollow. She saw it."

"No, my inner child." He muttered acerbically. The other shinigami exchanged a glance; they were used to him throwing himself and his sword at a problem, not growling about it from the sidelines. And certainly so sarcastically. But then again, this situation wasn't like those they had faced before, not really.

Yes; there was a rescue to be had, a damsel in distress—the shinigami twitched, she was going to _maim_ Urahara for calling her that next time she saw him, now he had her doing it too, the bastard!—to be dragged home if necessary, a warden to—_wait a moment…_

"She said she didn't want you to save her, didn't she?" Rukia murmured, finding a few more pieces of the puzzle behind the couch cushions and beginning to fit them into place. "She asked you not to fight."

The Vaizord said nothing, which made the answer clear. In return… she thwacked him on the head, so hard that he fell face-first into the floor. Hard.

Kuchiki Rukia was known for many things; her power despite her low rank, her adopted family, her artistic skill… but most definitely _not_ her merciful nature. She proved why mere moments later, when her foot collided with what arguably could have been the densest material in all of the worlds—Ichigo's skull. She ground her heel against his head for almost a full minute, until his muffled curses had gone from being screamed to grumbled and his flailing arms had finally slowed. "Hufeeah!"

"You," she enunciated the word with care, making sure it carried clearly despite the indiscernible swearing that could still be heard from her orange-haired friends' blocked mouth. "Are an idiot."

"Zuff'oo."

"Eh?"

"Zuff'oo!"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Renji finally spoke up, unadulterated confusion jarring him from his amused spectator status.

Rukia rolled her eyes. "How would I know?"

"ZUFF. OO."

Carefully, she shifted her foot—feet, the instant he started moving; he stopped soon enough after her other foot settled right on top of a very sensitive spot—to allow the carrot-top to enunciate his words just a little clearer. "Bitch."

Her foot came down. Renji almost winced, but he knew she was being nice—it was the one on his head she had stomped the Vaizord with. Besides, sudden movement on his part would just attract her attention, and the multiple bumps and bruises and scratches she'd inflicted on him earlier were still throbbing.

"Are you ready to talk _nicely_ now?" She asked in an oh-so-sweet-and-innocent-and-overall-la-la-la-I-clearly-can't-be-crushing-my-friend's-spinal-cord-while-holding-back-maniacal-cackling-because-I'm-just-too-darn-angelic—_yeah, right, in what disturbing parallel universe?_—tone of voice.

Ichigo was many things…and some would say that 'reckless, suicidal idiot' was one of them. Others would be forced to agree after his next statement.

"Yeah," he began, innocuously enough. "Shut up _please_."

Surprisingly enough, Rukia did not immediately blast him with the strongest kidou she knew. Neither did she kick him, punch him, or stomp on him again. Instead, she crouched down as he sat up, meeting his gaze wearily. "Ichigo… you have to stop."

"What are you talking about?" He asked, but shook his head when she opened her mouth to reply. "Never-mind, I don't care. We need to get back to—"

"Inoue?" The shorter shinigami finished. "That's what we're trying to tell you."

"_No_." He jumped to his feet, his reiatsu tumultuous around him and something cracked in his eyes. "I won't give up on her, why the hell would you even—"

"We're not, you idiot!" Renji cut in hurriedly, coming to stand alongside his longtime friend, the ends of his toes just a few hairs ahead of hers. "So get a hold of yourself before half of the Royal Realm finds out about this temper tantrum you're throwing!"

"Temper tantrum? I'll—"

"Sit down and _listen_!" Rukia snapped. "Not everything in life can be solved by hacking away at it with brute force. You have a brain under all of that orange hair, would it kill you to try and use it?" She hesitates briefly, just a few heartbeats before her fists clench and she barrels mercilessly onwards. "Because if you don't, you'll kill her."

_That_ shut him up. His mouth opened, closed, opened again and sagged briefly before slamming shut. The Vaizord looked away, eyes closing tightly… _fuck, he's taking it literally. But then again, it could be, with how fragile she is now…_

"She cares about you," the dark-haired noble told him softly, "about all of us. More than anything… and if you keep hovering like you have been since we left Hueco Mundo, she's going to see herself as more and more of a burden. And there is nothing, _nothing_, that is worse for her than that."

"She shouldn't be alone," Renji admitted, "but you hovering like some lovestruck new recruit will just make everything worse."

"I…" Ichigo hesitated for a few moments. "I have to protect her. I promised… I won't let her down again."

"You won't," his diminutive friend agreed. "But stalking her isn't helping."

The orangette snorted. "At least I didn't follow her into the bathroom!"

"You would have if I hadn't."

"And you did because I didn't." He retorted, unable to think of a way to deny that accusation without outright lying. "But I _have_ to protect her."

His voice trailed off, and the other two shinigami almost didn't hear his next words. "Even if she can't look me in the eyes again…"

Rukia didn't have the slightest idea what her friend was talking about. It was Renji who figured it out. "What, you think she's going to run screaming at the sight of you or something?"

Silence.

The redhead groaned. "I was kidding."

"Hah hah." Ichigo deadpanned.

"Why would Inoue—" she who Rukia knew was always bright always smiling, always brave and determined and would heal even her enemies "—be afraid of you?"

"Why wouldn't she?" He snorted, but it was a hollow sound.

No, she realized a heartbeat later, it wasn't. It was _Hollow_. "She saw your Inner Hollow?"

"I don't know," he whispered, unsure of whether or not he was lying, and if so then who he was trying to fool. "But she saw what it could make m—what it could do.

"Right after…" his fist hit something hard, he wasn't sure what—how could he have been so stupid? She'd been afraid of his mask, and what did he do? He went and lost control of the damn albino. He knew his Hollow had _destroyed_ half of Ulquiorra's body, and was sure that every time he washed his hands he couldn't rinse away Ishida's blood staining them, but what had it done to her? "No wonder she wants to get away from me."

"Ichigo…" he glanced up just in time for Rukia's fist to connect with his face. He flinched, but didn't even try to block it before he was sent flying. She loomed over him while Renji sweatdropped. Sure, the orangette had been pathetic at that moment, but nothing that warranted a black eye.

"There's that look again!" She snarled as Ichigo raised a hand to his face, gingerly feeling for—yup, the midget had broken his nose. He told her as much, and barely managed to scramble back from the low kick she sent his way.

As he clambered to his feet, she lunged forward and pinned him to the wall with one hand fisted in the front of his shihakusho. He was too startled to do anything more than blink at her as she jerked him down to her level, and, her breath hot on his face, murmured "just how dense can you get?"

With that, she let him go, and he braced himself against the thin wall as he shot her a warily confused glance. She met it for a few moments before he found himself turning away, but it was not her voice he heard next.

"Of course she'd be afraid, you idiot," Renji retorted. Even Rukia's other favorite victim—and she never hit the redhead _quite_ as hard as she pummeled the substitute, the latter was sure— understood what she was going on about, while Ichigo didn't? Only some small modicum of common sense kept his mouth shut rather than firing off some comment that he'd probably regret, and thankfully the vice-captain took that as a cue to continue. "Even I'd be nervous around a Hollow with your abilities! Before I kicked its ass, that is."

The Vaizord snorted, but there was little enthusiasm behind the sound—more than anything else, it seemed to have been uttered out of habit. And that was the only reason why the female member of the shinigami trio didn't bash her male compatriots' heads together as she had been about to do. Instead, she sighed.

"That's not the reason," she told them softly, "at least, not the biggest one."

Renji blinked, and opened his mouth—but his shortest nakama gave him a Look, one that begged him to wait rather than ordered him to do so. Thus he found himself silently awaiting her next words, which were withheld for over a minute as she waited for Ichigo to figure it out. To put it simply: he didn't.

"Think," she finally murmured, "_think_, Ichigo, you're better than this. And I know you haven't forgotten him."

"Him?" The substitute echoed, and when his voice faded the silence lasted exactly ten seconds. "Oh… _oh._"

He slid down, down; the back of his arms and shihakusho still scraping against the wall, but Ichigo himself not even noticing the sanded surface until he had hit the chirping floorboards. "Fuck."

The Kuchiki knew how he felt, at least somewhat. Contrary to what she'd admit in front of him, or someone who would tell him, the orangette wasn't completely blind in matters of the heart. Certainly, he had his blind spots, but he knew how it felt to be attacked by someone who looked—acted—smelled—felt so very, very familiar, but who wanted only what the memory you conjured whenever you closed your eyes had dreaded.

"I saw your mask," Rukia told him softly, "during the fight. I thought of someone I knew, years ago—he'd never worn one, but a Hollow had taken over his body."

There was a pressure on her shoulder, a weight that brought to mind dirty streets under bare feet, four other small bodies for warmth during those cold midnights, and awkward arguments after so many years falling into such easy familiarity so quickly. Rukia couldn't help the way she leaned back into Renji's wordless warmth, and wouldn't have anyways. She wanted to laugh, wanted to cry, at the thought of everything their gentle friend had been through in the months since everything had begun—but the redhead being there reminded her that she wasn't the only one who'd fight to keep that list from getting any longer.

For all of them.

"Even if he'd never had a mask, and it had never really been him in control, I still saw his face instead of yours at first. And I've… I've dealt with it." She didn't elaborate, and neither man pressed her to do so. Small mercies, but ones she was thankful for nonetheless—they didn't have time for her to beat them into being less nosy. "It's only been a few months for Inoue. She hasn't had the time, or even the inclination to work through the issues he left her with."

The teens fist clenched, but Rukia wasn't done yet. "Ichigo… how did she react? When she saw you?"

""…She was afraid." He didn't even look up at her, another small mercy as the Kuchiki suspected the expression on his face would make it _very_ difficult for her to keep from going back to violence. "She couldn't look me in the eye at first."

"The fact that she did at all…" Rukia shook her head, awed at her two closest human friends. Ichigo, for all that she knocked him around, had earned her admiration a thousand times over, and now it was a thousand and one. Not that she'd tell him that, especially not while he was still moping. And it looked as if she'd have to step her words up a notch to knock him out of it.

"She's afraid of you." The unseated officer felt nails dig into her shoulder in shock at the sheer bluntness of the statement—_note-to-self: get Renji drunk enough for a manicure at the SWA_—but continued on relentlessly. "And you're afraid of yourself. But you're not afraid of the Hollow killing you, are you—not as much as your afraid of it hurting us."

His head jerked up, and he met her gaze, shocked at her insight. She fought down a smirk—she knew him far too well. _And hopefully her as well_.

"The same goes for her… it just took her a while to figure it out." Rukia explained gently. "She was more afraid _for_ you than _of_ you. That's how it's always been with her."

"With all of us." Renji grumbled good-naturedly. "Since you're too much of a reckless idiot to keep yourself out of trouble."

"Like your one to talk."

_None of us are, _hung unsaid but heard, at least for the older two shinigami. Rukia closed her eyes, remembering the look in Orihime's eyes as she called her healing shield up over one fallen friend after another, each worse than the last. It was the same one Ichigo himself had worn when he had found out she was missing.

"She had nightmares," the unseated shinigami said quietly. "When we dragged you out to eat, after she fainted. The second your reiatsu was halfway down the hallway she started tossing and turning, and a few times she begged you not to get hurt."

The Vaizord glanced down at his fist, at the unblemished skin of the hand she had healed in another lifetime. Then, he stared up at the other two shinigami for several seconds, forehead wrinkled in thought…

"Hey!" But it was too late; by the time the cry left the dark-haired girl's lips that flicker of orange was long gone. She scowled, folding her arms and feeling a cold rage crystallize within her sword arm. But Renji's grip on her shoulder didn't loosen, and in fact grew just a bit tighter to hold her in place. She heard a rustling as he stooped over, and a few strands of red tickled her ears.

"Don't worry," the Eleventh Division survivor's voice was uncharacteristically soft, both in volume and tone. "They're a lot alike."

"That's the problem." She muttered, knowing that she really _should_ hit him, but really he'd been through enough that day already. Besides, maybe Ichigo wouldn't mess up for once.

_Maybe_.

"Yeah." His breath, she noted absently, smelled of wasabi, one of his least favorite foods. But so did hers, as Orihime had invited them to try the wasabi and red-bean paste flavored cheese nachos she had made for lunch. Where she had found the chips and salsa in the decidedly feudal Japanese kitchen was something they had yet to figure out, and weren't likely to want to until they got the last of the so-called nachos out of their system.

Especially Ichigo, who had somehow managed to choke down half of the bowl. The would-be chef had been so happy…

Rukia shook her head, leaning against that muscled chest with a sigh. "We really should get going…"

"Yeah," he said again. Neither of them moved.

-----

"—Demanded all of the world's citrus-flavored toothpaste! But if we gave it to them, how would the tuna fish brain leeches survive?"

"Mmm." Chad commented with a nod, his tone vaguely encouraging. It was good, he reflected, to see his friend at least pretending to be back to her old self. It would have been better to see her completely back to normal, but he doubted that any of them would ever fit the term again.

He knew he wouldn't.

But he hoped that, at least, she would be a happy abnormal. And it was nice to see her pretending; it meant that she wanted herself to be that way as well.

"So I asked them," she was saying, "and they told me… Kurosaki-kun?"

"Ichigo was involved in an alien invasion?" It may have been because of the sheer enormity of Orihime's imagination, or simply the unadulterated insanity of some of the situations that the ryoka tended to get themselves into, but for some reason the possibility didn't really surprise Chad.

As probable as such an event was, however, he found himself doubting that it had happened when he noticed that a familiarly overwhelming reiatsu was rapidly approaching. Orihime always had been particularly sensitive to Ichigo's spiritual pressure, the Mexican recalled. He stepped to one side just in time for an orange blur to flash—not literally, fortunately for Chad's eyes—through where he had been standing less than a second prior.

A moment later, the young giant found himself blinking down at the new pair of skid marks sported by the now-smoking floor. Judging from where the aforementioned marks ended, the substitute hadn't been able to stop until he had almost the other end of the hallway. He followed the streaks, raising his gaze as they went further and further… until the human found himself staring at two simple sandals, no worse for the wear despite the abuse that they had just been put through.

He really had to find out what the shinigami used to make their clothes; not only were their shoes apparently impervious to everything from friction to Hollows, but no matter how shredded Ichigo's shihakusho became during a battle it would be as good as new the next time the Vaizord left his body. His human friends, however, had each gone through so many massacres of favorite outfits that they were starting to consider a leaf—or more accurately, a cape—out of Ishida's book and start carrying around spares. Or at least learn how to repair the garments himself so that he didn't have to deal with so many people asking when he had become so religious.

"Inoue…" Ichigo's steps came to a stop a mere few feet away. Beneath that shock of orange hair, his eyes had caught Orihime's and refused to let them go. The dramatic effect was slightly ruined by many bruises that had appeared on his body—many oddly similar in shape to unusually tiny fists and feet—but Chad suspected he might have been the only one who noticed.

"K-Kurosaki-kun!" It might have been shock at his sudden arrival, confusion as she registered the fierce expression he wore, or simply tension that had been present in every move she made since her arrival—which the Mexican had, mere moments before, been doing his best to distract her from—that caused the brunette to stammer and stare. It might have been all of them together. But the point is that whatever caused her to freeze up, it also allowed Ichigo to reach over and carefully but firmly grip her by her upper arms.

"Do you want to leave?"

"Huh?" Orihime blinked, shaken out of the reverie that Ichigo's sudden arrival had put her in. She found her head lowering, and her gaze along with it. "You—"

"No," he shook his head, and his grip tightened slightly. "Not me. Not the Guardians. Not anyone else. Do _you_ want yourself to stay here?"

"I…" She knew she should say yes, that Hikifune-san had said she was putting him and the others in danger, but the words caught before she could throw them to the world. She… she…

"I can't!" She found herself whispering. "I can't go home, but I—I can't!"

Tears fell down her face, but she couldn't stop them anymore. Something had broken and she was coming apart now, there was no more glue or tape or paper clips for her to patch the cracked parts up with and no way for her to catch the pieces as they fell. She wanted to run away, to find herself a corner in the shadow to cry in where nobody could see and feel hurt that they couldn't help her, but he held her fast when her legs shook and gave way, and all she could do was cling to him and watch the last shards of her mask clatter to the floor.

"I can't…" She said again and again and again; she was useless, she was trash, she was in his arms and he was saving her _again_ and all she could do was let him. "I can't… I can't…"

"You can," he murmured, holding her so tightly neither of them were sure he'd ever be able to let go. "You _will_."

"I…" he felt the heat of her breath through his shihakusho. The rough fabric scraped against his skin as she tangled her fingers in it, her forehead bumping against his collarbone. He leaned in, wondering at the scent of her hair; how that subtle hint of strawberries and citrus had stayed throughout the long Hueco Mundo night, then the bloody battles that had followed, and finally the days—almost a week, now—that they had spent wandering this new Realm. "I have to go!"

Then she pushed off against his chest, stumbling back away from him. Ichigo tried to draw her close again, but it was too late: she had already bolted and he could only grasp at the reishi in the air. After a moment, he could do nothing but bury his head in his hands.

"What was that?" The substitute mumbled into his palms, eyes closed behind the splayed fingers. "What was I thinking?"

Chad could only shrug.

------

NOTE: In case anyone's wondering, Chad being Christian is just yours truly grasping at straws. Although Mexico does have a tiny but slowly growing population of Buddhists, 95% (according to wiki) of the population is comprised of self-ascribed Christians. Japan has an small but gradually increasing Christian population, and early on in the manga Keigo mentioned that it was rare for Chad to attend the fireworks festival.

The last part is probably more due to personal preference, though, since most Japanese don't tend to name themselves as followers of one specific religion. Instead parts of the two most popular faiths, Shintō and Buddhism, are often blended in the everyday life of Japan. Plus, Ishida skipped out of the festival that year, although he did so in order to work on his Quincy costume.

Anyways, to sum it up, in this story Chad's Christianity is a guess. And before anyone says anything, I'm an agnostic Jew with semi-comedic Pastafarian leanings.


	5. Someday We'll Know

"_It's over."_

_The woman raised her head, eyes flickering to rest on the speaker. There was a tangible blankness in her gaze, an exhaustion that was beyond the reach of rest. Blood had been splattered on her too-pale skin—some her own, more than she could have belonging to others—and the scent of burnt flesh lingered on her torn shihakusho. After a moment, she looked back down at the scratched and battered blade in her lap, and she wiped the blood off of it with a mechanical, repetitive jerk of her arm. _

_The man—boy, really—watched her with an unrestrained, silly smile. He had been on the outskirts of the fighting, she suspected, cannon fodder who wore his sword at his hip but never had to use it._

Well, good for him.

"_It's over!" He repeated, as though she hadn't heard him the first time, and when she didn't even bother glancing at him again his grin slipped slightly. But a moment later it was back again, albeit slightly forced. "We've won!"_

That_ earned him a reaction. The elder—not by more than a few years physically, but mentally she was a testament to how quickly one aged when her sword was dipped in blood and her friends fell whenever she dodged blades meant for her flesh— snorted contemptuously. "They'll be back."_

"_But they're dead, we won!" The child truly hadn't seen much battle, if any. She knew she should be grateful that he, at least, had been spared, but she felt nothing but bitterness curling in her stomach. "How can they come back?"_

"_There'll be another army on our doorsteps after a month, two if we're lucky." She retorted. "They may not be the exact same as these thugs, but they might as well be. They'll want the same thing, try the same way, and die just like those bastards did. And then there'll be another bunch of greedy idiots after them, and another after that. It's been going on since before either of us were born. Before the King was born, even."_

"_The King is dead." The boy's voice was little more than a whisper. "The new King—"_

"_Him, his son, his secret illegitimate nephew out of a laundry maid, who cares?" She looked away, down towards a particular grouping of tents. Each member of the army had been provided with the same canvas, the same wooden frames, but there was something different about this cluster, set apart from the rest with more than distance. "It's not like any of them will be alive for much longer."_

"_That's…" A splashing sound, boots in puddles of liquids better left unidentified, a step taken back. "That's treason!"_

"_It's the truth." A new voice. _Behind!

_In an instant, the woman had sprung into a ready crouch, the gleaming blade a steely blur as she moved it in front of her, battle screaming in her mind, to point at—a child? _

_No, a young woman, perhaps even her own age. But she walked with an almost childlike serenity, seemingly untouched by the blood that pooled from the bodies around them, squelching under her zōri and staining both the white sleeves of the kosode and the dark shihakusho._

_In a moment of startlement, she couldn't help but wonder—was that why they wore black? So that the blood they used to dye the worlds wouldn't so visibly taint them? Death was black, red was life, white was the nothingness of the Hollows that they fought. Black over white, splotched with seen and unseen red…_

_What were shinigami, really? Why did—_

"Excuse me," a familiar voice cut into the reverie of his reading, and Ishida raised his head…to see a blurred figure of white and black. He lifted one hand to push his glasses back up his nose, and the newcomer became even hazier as they reached out and snatched away the book he had been so engrossed in.

When the fuzzy image resolved itself into an easily visible person through the clear lenses, the Quincy couldn't help but be surprised at their identity. "Unohana-san?"

His shock turned to confusion and stung pride when, rather than answer him or at the very least give one of those benevolent nods she was so fond of, the healer ignored him in and flipped through the tome. To add insult to injury, she hadn't even bothered to mark his page!

"Unohana-san," he repeated, a bit more forcefully this time. It was strange for theusually gentle woman to be so near to outright rudeness, and he was too chivalrous to return her current lack of regard without far more provocation, but that didn't mean that he had to sit there without a word while she rifled through his research. Especially not before he had found out more than a few bits and pieces of information, none of which made him comfortable with the thought of it being in the hands of a high-ranking, possibly well-informed shinigami.

"This isn't the first one you've read, is it Quincy-san?" She asked, closing the tome with a dull _thud_. She traced the faded lettering on the cover, frowning as she answered her own question. "No, you'd never have paid so much attention to it if it were."

He shifted before he could think about it, trying to hide the small pile of records behind him. Of course, that only served to give them away, and her gaze flicked quickly over the titles on the sides of those that had them. Many were just old enough to lack them, but not quite ancient enough to have warranted being recopied into more modern mediums. Or perhaps they had been, but he had merely found these first—if there was one thing she remembered clearly from her last visit to the Royal Archives, it was that it made its counterpart in the seireitei look like an organizational masterpiece in comparison.

Yes, the same archives that poor Hanatarou had lost himself in for over a month, once. That was how bad the records in the Royal Realm could get. Sometimes, the healer was left to shake her head in exasperation; the Guardians greeted having to rebuild an entire wing as an escape from boredom, yet left the archives untouched for centuries at a time? They could give the Eleventh a run for its money, to say the least.

She sighed. "Perhaps Kirio has the right of it after all..."

"If you don't mind me asking, Unohana-san," Ishida's tone made it very clear that even if she did, he was asking anyways and she owed him an answer, "what exactly is going on here?"

"It…" She hesitated—but no. "It has nothing to do with what is going on now."

The snort that the teen uttered in reply was anything but polite. "I highly doubt that."

"I suppose not." For once, the woman looked her two thousand years. "It's more that it _shouldn't_ have anything to do with the current situation."

"But it does." He pressed.

She gave him a nod, and the corner of her mouth twisted in what was probably supposed to have been a smile. "It does."

There was silence then, save for the faintest drifting of shouts from elsewhere in the Royal Realm. Perhaps Zaraki had found another sparring partner, or Yachiru and Nel had begun another game of 'Endless Tag'.

Maybe it was even the other ryoka, bickering over what to eat and whether or not to wait for their last member to join them, as they had been during almost every meal for the last week. At first, it had only been a lunch or two, but Ishida had progressively grown more and more absorbed in his research, until he reached the point where he tended to arrive only once the rest of the group had almost finished. Despite his slow eating habits, the group seemed to have little to no problem with sticking around to heckle the Quincy.

But that didn't matter now; there'd be plenty of other meals for them to squabble over after they returned home… he could practically hear Keigo whining about having to pay for them already.

However, the best chance they had of that happening was in those books. Ishida had to get them back. His fingers twitched towards the buttons on his sleeve; he could feel the chain of his bracelet shift against his skin, warm from his own body heat and the reishi it was absorbing from the air. It was thicker than the energy that comprised Soul Society or Hueco Mundo, and far more tangible than that found in the human world. If he fought here—

She raised her eyes above the book, and he froze. If he fought here, he knew with a sudden thrill of dread that he still wouldn't have a chance. That chill in those eyes—she wouldn't hesitate to cut him down.

The brave Quincy slumped back, shaken by the sheer _indifference _in her gaze. He had come up against those who fought in desperation, for pride, for fun… but this woman saw killing as nothing more than walking.

_And she is the greatest healer they have ever known…?_

Unohana saw the unadulterated _horror_ flash across his face before he could stifle it, and the book almost fell from her hands. Was this how Hikifune Kirio, once the matron of the Gotei Thirteen, had become the condescending person she had? _I know better_, _they're only children_, _surely they can't know what they are trifling with_…

It was hard, to stop the trembling of her hands as she offered the stolen volume back to the boy. But there was still a fine quivering in her fingers as he plucked it from her grip, quickly lest she change her mind.

_If he noticed,_ she mused wryly, _at least he's old enough to know not to mention it._

Kirio might have been right, she was prepared to admit, but it was for the wrong reasons. That past should have no bearing on the present… but if it had to, then perhaps these youths would be able to use it to their advantage.

"Two thousand years ago, when that was written," Ishida absently ran his hands across the cover as she spoke, the kanji pricking against his fingers. "The shinigami were at war."

He nodded, he had gotten more than far enough to know that. But the question was...

"Against who?"

She closed her eyes. "Everyone."

------

"Orihime-chan? Is something the matter?"

"It's… I can't do it, Hikifune-san. I just—I _can't_. I can't say good-bye to them, not again."

"I know it's hard, but this is for their sakes as much as yours."

"I know, but…" She wiped away her tears, blinking away those that were still trying to fall, and tried vainly to straighten her back, to at least look strong. "I had an idea…"

------

"We'd always been at war," she continued. "We had to keep the Royal Family safe."

He blinked. "Why?"

"It was our purpose," she said with the shrug of one relating something that had always been a given, at least to them. "They had a power in their souls… it would only run through those born into their family, but some failed to believe that. Others knew but didn't care, and would use the members of the Family who were vulnerable, and kill the rest. But they failed to understand that the worlds would fall with the King and his kin."

Ishida froze, remembering his grandfathere's tales; "_shinigami are balancers, Uryuu, they'll preserve the worlds at any cost."_

"We fought Hollows, yes, but also humans and even others who could have been shinigami." She looked tired, so very tired, and he wondered just how old she was. She seemed, at that moment, far older than two thousand…

"Every time we beat back one force," she recalled, "there was always another waiting to pounce. Many of us were tired enough to jump on the idea when Yamamoto-soutaichou first proposed it… in fact, some had to be held back from participating."

"Participating…?" He wished he could take back the word as soon as he had repeated it. It hung heavily in the air, too heavily, and he was sure it was going to fall and crush them all.

She gave him an expression that might have been a smile in another age. "That's the true secret of the Royal Key, why the past attempts have never truly been powerful enough—the souls involved must be willing."

"Willing?" He echoed again. She nodded.

"To become one." The healer leaned over, picking the top book off of the pile and flipping through it. "You've read this already?"

The Quincy nodded, not trusting himself with words. She didn't even seem to notice. "Then you know what happened to the first Royal Key."

"Yes, but… why would they try it again?"

"Because they cannot afford to fail." She handed him back the volume, opened, and he glanced down at the pages. "They allowed the reincarnations of Tanabata-hime and Mikeran to live out their lives wherever they were born, so long as the worlds around them didn't know of her true power. If they ever found out… well, you know what Aizen did."

Ishida winced at the memory of that smug voice weaving through his skull, gloating over the victory he was sure awaited him. Yes, he most certainly did know.

"Good luck, Quincy." She murmured, getting to her feet. "You children—you've done the impossible before. I hope you manage it again. Inoue-san deserves her happiness… but the King must not die. He's the only one left, and he has a long way to go before he can defend himself."

------

"Hey, Banana-chan? Why are you sneezing so much?"

------

A/N: See, neechan? I told you Banana-chan wasn't just there for crack!


	6. Fools Like Me

A/N: Yes, I'm cruel.

------

True to her word, Hikifune had assigned four of her subordinates to accompany them back and begin a census in Rukongai. Four shinigami had been overjoyed about this. Byakuya… not so much. The majority of the males in the group had decided that he was insane after watching the noble practically be carried through the Gate by the gleeful triplets, although only Renji had been foolish enough to say as much. He had been promptly chased through the Gate by an irate Rukia. Hanatarou had gone after with Chad to stop any murder or particularly gruesome maiming from taking place, while Ishida had followed Mayuri to make sure that the annoyed scientist didn't attempt to poison any of them—the fact that doing so allowed him to walk alongside Nemu had never entered his mind, he claimed with a strangely red hue to his face that was most definitely _not_ a blush.

The others had trickled through afterwards, while the King tried to hide his displeasure—or at least make it appear to stem from a different reason, specifically the way that his two playmates had latched onto him. Unohana had finally taken pity on him and lured the two away with candy, slipping the King a lollipop so that he wouldn't feel left out. He pretended to sulk over being treated like the child he appeared to be, but it was clear he was still sniffling for a different reason altogether even as he stuffed the treat into his mouth.

There was only one other who hadn't gone through yet. He had waited to go through with her—he'd be last. The substitute turned to where he had last seen his friend, only to find her walking slowly, hesitantly—and yet, at the same time, her fists were clenched, her spine was straight, and there was a gleam of _something_ in her eyes—towards him.

Whatever it was, he was glad to see it. If he couldn't recognize it, it couldn't be bad—right? "Inoue, you ready?"

"Kuro…" She hesitated, and he felt something twist inside of him. He whacked whatever it was repeatedly with Zangetsu's blunt edge until it fell over twitching. They'd have time; they were going back after all. Finally, finally going back.

"Ichigo-kun."

And there it was again, twisting and squirming but in a different way, a lighter way, and wait a second was he blushing oh _fuck _they'd never let him live it down—

"Orihime," it was strange, just how right it sounded. He probably should have added a '-chan' to the end; but they'd been through Heaven and Hell together, and she didn't _look_ like she wanted to hit him or cry or run away or hit him harder. At least, he didn't think she did, but he was starting to realize just how much she'd been able to fool him before, with her countless masks and forced smiles. "You ready?"

She hesitated, just a moment, but didn't tear her eyes away from his. He'd never noticed, but there were so many colors in them. "Almost, Ichigo."

The King chose that moment to make the obligatory royal announcement. "Ew…"

"It _is_ pretty sappy," one of the attending Royal Guards muttered, while another attempted to stifle his tears before they could be noticed and subsequently result in him never living it down. And for a Guardian, 'never' could end up being quite a while, especially taking into account the little smirk Hikifune was currently wearing.

Ichigo shot their audience a scowl, then turned back to Orihime, his furrowed brow smoothing the moment she was securely back in sight. "Come on, let's go."

"Ichigo…"

He had already been in the process of striding dramatically off into the portal, eager to get back to everyone, to bring _her_ back. "Yeah?"

He half-turned—and tasted red bean paste.

And zucchini. And salmon. And possibly some chocolate and spaghetti, too.

But mostly red bean paste.

He felt something wrap around his hand, which had fallen limply at his side—it was warm, and soft, and he should have known what it was, and _whatthehellisgoingonmyhandandherhandandhermouthisandmymouthandwhatthehellwhatthehellwhatthehell._

As she brought their intertwined fingers up between their chests, palms pressed tightly together, he couldn't help but bring his other hand up as well, to brush back a few stray hairs that had come loose from her hairpins. Her free hand caught his, but he didn't feel skin. Rather… something smooth, thin and oddly familiar if he'd been able to think past the _whatthehell _still running around his mind in frantic little circles.

His fingers closed around something, hers gently pressing them into place and lingering for a few moments. Something about the way she stood changed—he couldn't define it, but it made him close his eyes and lean in just a little bit closer, while her grip on the hand against his chest tightened…

It was then the Vaizord realized he was sitting on his ass outside of the gate, blinking up at the faces of his comrades and friends who had already crossed, along with those who had been waiting for them. _Well, _he consoled himself. _At least they look just as confused as I probably do._

"Ichigo…" Rukia knelt down alongside him, eyes narrowed slightly. "Your face is wet."

He must have raised a hand to his cheek, because his fingers came away damp. The Vaizord stared at them dully for a long moment before comprehension _slammed_ into him. "ORIHIME!"

He was a black-and-orange blur as he leapt to his feet, shoving aside a few slower shinigami—he'd apologize to the soutaichou later, if he felt like it, and it wasn't his fault that Zaraki and Grimmjow had decided to hold their insult contest right there—in his haste to get through. He managed to clear the press of black-garbed forms and catch sight of the open gateway, where that figure in white still hovered, wraith-like down to the pale skin of the hand resting against the inside of the wooden pillar. Her gaze darted behind him, seeking out the familiar hues of black, red, brown, blue-black—before finally meeting his.

"Orihime?" He thought he heard himself say, but so softly—it could have been the wind.

There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. He moved, but not fast enough—never fast enough. "Santen Kesshun."

Golden light, _hers_, blazed between them…and he had a brief moment of pain as he thudded into it before he fell through, rolling on dewy grass and dirt. Behind him, the gate stood empty, with the shinigami, Hollows, and humans who had come to be part of his world peering through at him.

He looked at the wooden gate, at the graining in the wood where her fingers had been less than a minute before. It didn't look as if it could link dimensions. It didn't look as if it could do anything, except fall apart. And it couldn't, not without her.

"…should have known," the evening breeze carried the breathed words to him, the shards of the syllables falling to the ground around him one by one as they fell brokenly from Rukia's lips. Fragments of the binding kidou and chains she had once worn, scraps of rope and pieces of that crimson collar. "I should have guessed, _damnit _Inoue…"

The Vaizord's senses were keen, beyond the strange roaring in his ears he could make out the whispers, shouts, and choked-off curses from the others. Questions—and maybe even real answers.

He doesn't listen to find out, though, finding the fist he had clenched in the grass far more fascinating. What was the point of an explanation now, of all times? It couldn't bring her back, and it couldn't reject that she was gone.

Gone. She was _gone_._ Gone gone gone gone—_

Ichigo didn't remember getting to his feet, much less walking back to the deactivated gate. He blinked, it seemed, and there was a familiar hand gripping his wrist, keeping him from punching through that hatefully normal wood.

Turning slightly, twisting only his neck, he caught a glimpse of black through the carroty fringe of his hair. Shihakusho-black, with slashes of white. A tilt of the head, and the one restraining him was completely visible.

He should have felt angry. He should have felt betrayed. But it was already raining, and the only things that managed to break through the downpour at the sight of his father in a shinigami's garb was slight shock and slighter irritation. And the latter was for the interruption rather than the revelation.

He gave a token effort to tug his arm free, and unsurprisingly enough it failed. Feeling oddly detached, the orangette mulled over the thought of cutting off the restraining limb. Or maybe just _pulling_ it off…

"If you damage that gate," Isshin's voice was soft, but perfectly audible with the silence that the remainder of group had fallen into, "you will lose any chance you have at ever seeing her again."

"Taichou…" He heard one of the triplets whisper, incredulous, astonished. They stood behind the man, staring at him with widened eyes, but Ichigo couldn't bring himself to care about that.

_What chance?_ He wanted to ask. But he didn't want to hear the answer, doubted it would matter anyways. He _wrenched_ his arm free—there was a pop of someone's arm being dislocated, but he wasn't sure whose and didn't really care—and turned to face the skyline.

Stones. A cemetery—_the_ cemetery, where the last remnants of his mother 'rested', assuming that the Hollow that had devoured her hadn't had a human enough digestive system to do more than shove her soul down his throat.

He glanced towards his friends, his nakama, his world with that missing core—tears rolled down Rukia's cheeks even as she gaped at Isshin, he couldn't make out Chad's eyes through the thick curtain of hair, Ishida—standing by a man who stood with his nose just as high in the air, and who Ichigo was sure he'd seen at a medical conference his dad had dragged him and his sisters to years ago, when he couldn't find them a babysitter—had turned away, and even as Renji stood with Rukia he had clearly failed to find a single comforting word. Beyond them, he caught a glimpse of white through a sea of legs, but he couldn't see more, _wouldn't_ see more, until someone stepped aside and he had too.

Her eyes reflected the same stars as in the Royal Realm. He was sure he could even pick out the ones she had named for him. For a moment he was there again, he could hear her voice. But then a hand covered over those once-bright orbs, closing them. A gesture of respect, he dimly recalled.

Yet… he couldn't…

Kurosaki Ichigo had faced down Captains and Espada without hesitation, had grinned as he fought those he _knew_ could and would kill him, had been thrown to the sharks only to end up biting them back—ran.

------

He ran, and ran, and ran. But his guilt was always there, always a step or two behind. Sometimes, even ahead—when he found his footsteps striking down on familiar streets, when he glanced upwards to see an apartment building with one darkened window, when he passed _the river, Tatsuki-chan and I always go to chase red dragonflies there!_

He stopped—there were no red dragonflies. No dragonflies at all, actually. No dragonflies, no Tatsuki, and no… no nothing. Only the water.

He wished that there would have been at least Grand Fisher's lure. Maybe if he hit something, he'd feel better. And if he didn't, well, it wasn't like he could feel worse.

His feet resuming their pounding on the streets; there was nothing for him there anymore.

------

"How is he?"

"No change, he still hasn't let us in. His plates come back clean, but for all we know he's flushing the food down the toilet."

Two days ago, when Chad had first shown up at the front door to the Kurosaki Clinic, Karin had greeted him with a swift kick to the shin. For leaving her to deal with her father, she claimed, and not staying put while you were hurt, you idiot.

It had taken him a while to remember that day. Part of that might have had to do with how, the moment he had gingerly put his throbbing leg back down, she had kicked it again. "And that was for whatever's going on with Ichi-nii, since he's too pathetic to kick right now."

She scowled, and shoved her hands in her pockets. "Plus, if I break down another door I'll have to deal with my dad wailing at that damn memorial poster _again_."

He raised an eyebrow beneath his eternally overgrown mane. "You shouldn't use language like that."

A snort, just as rude if a bit less articulate than the earlier curse. "You're not my father."

"No," he agreed placidly as she stepped aside to let him in. "I'm not."

Now, they had come to a slight ritual, she let him in, he came in, they stood in front of Ichigo's door for a while, and then he left. But this time, the tanned teen could feel that something was different. Something in the air was charged. Maybe this time, the one who they both waited for would finally open up—just a bit.

"So…" She trailed off as they walked down the hall, and her voice had softened by the time she continued. "Can you tell me something? Anything? Ichi-nii… he won't."

Chad hesitated, and she stopped to glare up at him. "I _know_. About him being a shinigami, about the Hollows, about all of that. But… where has he been? And why did he come back like this?"

The Mexican's mouth worked soundlessly for several moments. Really, he shouldn't have been surprised—he himself had fought against a Hollow with her help, seemingly so long ago. But…

_No,_ something—his abuelo? Himself? The power in his arms?—told him._ She should know. They all deserve that, at least._

"Do you know Inoue Orihime?"

"Orihime-chan?" Karin blinked up at him, taken aback by what she thought was a change in subject. "Yeah, Tatsuki-chan's brought her around a few times when she comes to visit Ichi-nii." Her eyes narrowed, thoughts whirling darkly behind them. "Why? Is she involved in all of this too? What about Tatsuki-chan?"

"Arisawa…" He thought for a moment, frowning. "She was involved about as much as you were. Inoue, though…"

"_Does that mean we have to make our choice here about... the path we have to take…"_

He talked, and talked, and talked until his voice was hoarse and then he talked some more. He was supposedly the strong, silent type—he wondered what those who called him that would say now. He didn't tell her everything—couldn't, he didn't know it all even now, and he doubted he ever would—but what she did learn that evening was more than enough for the both of them.

The sun was setting by the time she wordlessly opened the door to let him out. He said nothing, hefting his school bag with a slight grunt but otherwise mute. But neither needed to say a thing, since both would have said the same single word.

'_Thanks.'_

He hesitated after crossing the threshold, and although he didn't turn Karin knew he was addressing her when he finally did speak. "Tell Ichigo we're going back tomorrow."

"To school?" He nodded. "Alright."

He twisted slightly to give her a quick, tired little smile, but when he turned back around he made the mistake of stepping forward at the same time… without checking to see if the aforementioned direction was already occupied. By Kuchiki Byakuya, to be precise. The noble was caught off guard for the first time in quite a while, and he stumbled backwards into his sister, who stumbled back into Renji, who braced her but took a step back right onto—

"OOOOOOOW!" A voice that was so familiar it set the more athletic Kurosaki twin to twitching wailed. "Oh, Masaki, why must our third daughter and future son-in-law wound their daddy so?"

"Because you're an idiot," Karin muttered under her breath, but frown as something indefinable prodded her in the medulla oblongata.

Something was odd here, she knew. Maybe it had something to do with the black garments all of the newcomers, including her dad and 'second sister'—and the guy who was being tortured as the latter's husband-to-be, although knowing the torturer that was probably just another exaggeration—were wearing? It almost looked like…

"You have _got_ to be kidding me…" The redhead took a step back onto her father's foot again, seeing _black-haired_ and _midget_ and _really really __**really**__ ticked off_ and associating it with a sketchbook to the head.

"K-Karin-chan!" Isshin greeted her, sweating slightly from nervousness.

"Is _everyone_ in my family a shinigami except me?" She snarled, nowhere near in the mood for his cajoling. "Is that guy Yuzu buys groceries from one too? And let me guess, her stuffed animals are possessed by them!"

Everyone glanced at Chad, who gave them hapless shrug. "I didn't tell her _that_."

"Well, only one stuffed animal," her soon-to-be-deader sperm donor admitted sheepishly. "And he was actually only created by shinigami, he's not one himself."

"That weird yellow lion, Boston or whatever?" At the resulting nods, Karin groaned. "You dead people have the weirdest taste ever, you know that?"

"You try waiting for hours for roadkill…" Rukia muttered. "We weren't sure that the stuffed animal idea would even work."

"Whatever," she scowled and folded her arms, but it was mostly for show, just as Isshin's panic was. This entire conversation, with its lightheartedness, was all a façade. Sure, Karin was furious at her father and at herself for never realizing, but with how Ichigo had been lately… she couldn't focus on that. She wanted her older brother back too much.

"Are you here to see Ichi-nii?" The tone of her voice made it very clear that even if they hadn't been before, they were now. They nodded anyways. "You're going to have to break into his room, he's locked the doors and windows. He even barricaded the attic."

"Damn, so he really can learn…" The tattooed stranger muttered, only to be thwacked over the head by Isshin for using such language in front of his precious, innocent little daughter. Said precious, innocent little daughter promptly kicked him in the shin before storming off.

"She's certainly a Kurosaki," Byakuya observed drily before turning back to the other shinigami. "We'll be waiting at the Shoten."

"Hai," she gave a quick, but clearly practiced bow. "Thank you, nii-sama!"

By the time she had finished the first word, Renji realized she was dragging him up the stairs. Damn, she'd gotten fast, and he said as much. She didn't even bother to make a witty retort before skidding to a stop—they had arrived in front of the forebodingly locked door, with its hanging fifteen and silent depths.

Kuchiki Rukia was Not Impressed. "Oi, Ichigo, open up!"

She paused, resting an ear against the wooden barrier. No answer. She pulled back and started pounding on it. "OI!"

"You can't stay in there forever," Renji put in, "you'll stink up the whole living world! And if you die while you're still moping, what'll happen to the seireitei? There's no way I'll be able to get drunk with you reeking like that!"

"And don't give me that look," he muttered to his other friend before she could even open her mouth. "Why do you think I need to get drunk so badly? Are _you_ planning on staying sober anytime during the next week?"

She hesitated, but could say nothing to deny the accusation. It was true, after all. She was going to find Matsumoto and Kyouraku-taichou and _take _their stashes if her divisions' third-seats' weren't enough. She wouldn't be expected to take on any duties until her promotion ceremony anyways, so she could afford to stay in a comfortable alcoholic the next month or so.

She knew it was a coward's way out, beneath the dignity of a member of the Kuchiki Clan, the first fukutaichou the Thirteenth Division would have in decades, a warrior who had taken down one member of the Espada and helped in triple- another. But screw dignity. All of them had just learned the hard way that courage couldn't solve everything—and each of them would be dealing with the consequences in their own way. She just hoped that the method their orange-haired leader had chosen would be short-lived.

Renji gave her one of those all-knowing looks he rarely managed to get away with using in front of her, but she couldn't find fault in it this time other than the fact she simply wanted to punch it off of his face. "I didn't think so."

And now that tone had her feeling guilty, and more miserable than before, and she couldn't even hit him because of it. So she settled for pummeling the poor door some more. "ICHIGO!"

-----

_Thinking_, he decided, _is the worst idea mankind has ever had._

So why couldn't he stop?

Oh, right. Because every time he tried, he'd close his eyes and see the way her hair had shone in the starlight, how her eyes had always flicked from injury to injury and that little twitch her hands had had when she wanted to heal someone—which had been all the time.

He was supposed to be able to protect her. Not just her, everyone. He'd looked up into her eyes and remembered how blood had dripped in front of one and how it had been his fault, and then he'd promised her that the next time it would be different. _"Next time, I'll protect you!"_

And then he'd let her down _again_.

He held his hand as high as he could above him, spreading the fingers out and tracing the halo of the light they blocked. After a moment, he clenched it into a fist—that warm golden reiatsu had long since faded.

He wished Rukia wouldn't shout so much. How did a midget like her get lungs like that? And she was still hammering on the door like a maniac, like it mattered.

Didn't she realize? Didn't Renji? Didn't either of them even care?

She could just break it down, with even less effort than all of her bellowing and bashing was taking. A few words would turn it from a solid, strong panel of wood bound by metal into a smoking heap of ash and melted steel. He could have told her to go through first, instead of waiting while she finished talking to that brat. He could have grabbed her when he saw that strange light in her eyes, hefted her over his shoulder and bolted before any of those damned Guards—Wardens, in his mind—knew what was going on.

Instead Rukia was shrieking at him from outside of the flimsy wood, and they had tried to solve something without fighting and failed. It would have been better if he had just tried to force them to let her go—that way, the worst that would have happened is that he wouldn't have to feel this way.

He knew she wouldn't have wanted that, that she wouldn't have wanted him to lie on his bed and mope any more than she would have wanted him to lose himself fighting to save her, even if it would have been worth it to him. If there had been one thing that he _knew—knows_, she's not dead no matter what those bastards were going to say!—about her, it was that she'd run into an inferno to save a complete stranger, or even an enemy. She would never have wanted anyone else to suffer because of her.

That was probably why she'd tried so hard to keep it hidden. She hadn't wanted to hurt him.

Or maybe Rukia had been wrong. Maybe she really had been—_was_ _still_ afraid of him.

Whatever the case, he'd prefer physical wounds to this. Slashes from a sword would heal, given time and care. He didn't know if this would, or should.

He could have saved her. He _could_ have. But he hadn't, and now… he had tried going to Urahara, demanding his help once again.

It was quiet now, Ichigo realized. He could still sense the two vice-captains right outside his door, but they had stopped yelling and beating on his door for now. If he held his breath, he could just hear them murmuring to each other. There was a third voice, and he recalled the way Kon had stalked out of his room less than five minutes after his return.

He wondered if they were there to try and _force_ him to read the letter. Back during the… the kiss, before she had pushed him away, what she had pressed into his hand had been folded sheets of paper. He had dropped them upon arriving on the other side, and Unohana had picked them up, passed them around. He could remember the odd softness of the sheets, the faint creases where she had changed the folds, the crinkled edges from where he had gripped them too roughly. He could still see the names, each penned with the care that had come so naturally to her—_Kuchiki-san, Ishida-kun, Urahara-san, Tatsuki-chan…_

"_Aren't we nakama?!"_

He didn't deserve to be, if he ever had. He hoped that Tatsuki's note had made that much clear. He knew she had gotten it, read it—the first and only time he'd answered the phone since his return, and it had been to hear her voice.

"_She's not going to come back to class, is she?" _His childhood sparring partner had asked, quietly and without preamble. _"She won't graduate with us."_

He thought that it was strange for her to focus on that. But really, there was nothing he could say was normal anymore, not for him.

He was… warm. Not sweltering, or even slightly over what was comfortable, but he found himself swinging his legs out of bed. It felt almost like being under her healing shield, soft and soothing. Almost as if someone were embracing him from behind, wrapping their arms around his chest and whispering too quietly for him to make out more than the comforting tone.

It was November now, and far cooler outside. He opened the window with a grunt—he'd know if someone tried to use it to break in. He was almost painfully aware of the reiatsu signatures around him now; he'd make sure never to lose another one again.

For a moment, he stood there in the chilled breeze, fingers wrapped so tightly around the windowsill that he had the vague knowledge that his circulation was probably being cut off. The stars were out… he could hear her whispering their names again, hear her voice rising and falling through the syllables as she traced out the constellations for his benefit. His eyes closed, and for a moment the wind was her breath, a bit faster just before she leaned in and he did too, buffeting him with the fragile force of a butterfly's wings beating to keep it hovering in midair. _Wait…_

He opened his eyes to a familiar black, rising and falling slightly less than an inch away. He quashed down the disappointment, she wasn't there, she would never be there now. He had to get used to that.

"Those two aren't in here." He swatted at the Hell Butterfly, trying to shoo it off so it would stop reminding him of her. It evaded his halfhearted swings with ease, until he gave up and trudged back to his bed. The insect fluttered after him, landing on his nose a few moments after he had layed back down. He raised a hand to brush it away—

"_Ichigo?_"

It didn't speak in a shinigami's voice.


	7. At Least We Made It This Far

In the Royal Realm, the girl stepped back, away from the falling remnants of her shield. Her fairies hesitated before returning to their crystalline petals, murmuring soothing words she couldn't quite make out. A few Guardians awkwardly tried to do the same, but none of them had had much contact with anyone under two-hundred years old in centuries, much less a teenaged human. They hovered for a bit before drifting away, some to drink, some to sleep, some to wander until they could banish the nagging guilt that would haunt many of them for the days to come, and drive them to avoid the girl as much as they could.

For a moment, Hikifune was tempted to join them. But she steeled herself—those children were just that: children. Even most of the shinigami that had been with the group had been far too young to know much about the situation, and what could have happened if she hadn't done what she had to do. This was truly the best method for everyone involved.

_Besides_, she told herself sternly. _Isshin wouldn't have left those orders if there was any other way—he always was too softhearted._

"Hikifune-san?"

She blinked, somewhat startled by the brunette standing in front of her. She hadn't thought the girl would be able to tear herself away from the closed gate for hours yet. "Yes, child?"

"If it's alright with you, could we…" she hesitated, glancing back towards the closed passageway briefly, with such intensity in her eyes that the captain was sure she was going to break and run back. But then took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders and meeting Hikifune's gaze. "Could we start tonight? Now?"

The woman couldn't help but feel taken aback by the determination of the Royal Realm's newest inhabitant. She had expected it to be days, even weeks before the human recovered from the separation enough to broach the subject. "Are you sure you wouldn't like some time to get settled in first?"

"No," her hairpins glittered in the fireflylight, the night's greatest source of illumination in the sheltered, tree-roofed little clearing. "Forgive me for saying this, but… I want to get started as soon as possible. Because I want it to end soon, too."

"I suppose you would, wouldn't you?" Hikifune murmured, wondering why she was surprised. After a moment, she gave a brisk nod, more to herself than to the caramel-haired teen. "Very well, then. But not quite yet… there's something you will most likely wish to learn first."

The child hesitated, curiosity and even slight suspicion—after all that she had been through, even the greatest of saints would be a bit jaded—warring with the raw, rough-edged grief in her eyes. "What is it?"

"How to use a Hell Butterfly." A gasp, but the Guardian continued onwards. "After all, you'll need to tell him where to go if he wants to see you when the time comes."

The girl frowned, confused but with a tenuous hope beginning to leak into her heart. But the deal… "You mean when I'm as strong as you are? When I can…" The words caught briefly in her throat, but she forged onwards. "When I can go home?"

They had sent her body through, yes, but not for a funeral—it would be preserved, allowed to age, so that if the optimistic young woman did prove the Captain wrong she would be able to return and settle back into her human life. Certainly, it would have been easier and probably better for the body to be allowed to die and be displayed for a funeral. But with the deal the child had made…

She would have grown up and older, but if she managed to beat the odds and precedents and triumph in less than a century—an impossibility that was growing increasingly easy even for the stubborn Guardian to imagine—well… who knew?

"No," HIkifune shook her head, but she was smiling. "There are days when the boundaries between the worlds thinned. The night traditionally reserved for the Royal Realm was not this one… Samhain is the time of Western Spirits. Ours is the seventh day of the seventh month."

Orihime almost fell to her knees, out of relief or misery she couldn't be sure. Possibly, no, _probably_ both.

The irony was cruel, she knew abstractly, cruel and painful that the day of her namesake would be hers as well. But at least it was there. At least it would be one day… one night. She could deal with that, and if she couldn't she would anyways. She would wait, and she would train. _And one day…_

For that one day, she would wait. If it took one year or her five lifetimes… that day would be worth it.

It _had_ to be.

She just hoped that Kuro—that _Ichigo_ didn't hate her when that day came. The others would miss her, just as she'd miss them, but with what she had done to him… she couldn't blame him if he never wanted to see her again.

But still, she had to try. And even if he turned away, even if he refused to so much as look at her… she was too weak not to hope.

"Are you ready, Inoue Orihime?"

"No," she said, more to herself than to the Guardian. "But I will be."

_I'll see you again, Kurosaki-kun, everyone. Until then… I'll go forward, and I hope you will as well._

------

"_Ichigo… give me a chance too. I promise, I'll come home."_

------

"Fuck," Renji muttered, swishing the last few drops of sake around his cup. "Where'd it go?"

"Where'd what go?" Matsumoto Rangiku slurred from where she tipped dangerously back in her chair, the cup in her hand held deceptively loosely. Of course, they all knew that it would be easier to yank every hair out of her head than separate that fukutaichou from her alcohol.

_No_, Rukia somehow managed to correct herself through the pleasant fog of drunkenness, _not fukutaichou anymore. I wonder if anyone else still thinks of her like that…_

"That…" She murmured, gesturing in the vague direction of the air next to Matsumoto's legs, which was about a foot above the edge of the haori hanging of the sides of the chair. "That doesn't… don't fit? You should ask Kyoraku-taichou where he got his coat, and his flower petals, and this… this…" she waved the cup around in lieu of naming it. "This _this._ And Ise-san, because Kira-san would probably be too nervous to throw them on you."

"Throw what?"

_Then again, _the dark-haired shinigami found herself stumbling back a subject through the maze her drunken thoughts had become. _I still don't think of myself as a fukutaichou, or Renji as a noble._ "Hey, Renjiiiiiiiii..."

"Mmm?" He mumbled into his bottle.

"Are you a noble?" She asked, wiggling beneath his arms and curling up in his lap.

"Dunno," he slurred, the tattooed brows arching as his forehead creased bemusedly. "That lady whose... _thingies_ you stuck your head into—"

"Wasn't on purpose..."

"Thingies?" Hisagi echoed, cackling.

"This coming from the guy who can't get near them?" The redhead shot back, sobering slightly. "And yours don't count! Anyways, that lady said I was one. And the captain. And didn't you?"

"I think I did..." Rukia buried her head in his chest. She didn't really feel like thinking now. But she'd gotten him started and he wanted to follow it through.

"And didn't someone give me lessons on manners and boring stuff like mannerisms?" He mumbled, finger-combing her hair absently. Then, he blinked. "Heeeeey, that's right! Isn't Kira supposed to be here to teach me something?"

"Would not!" The vice-captain of the Third Division protested, but then tilted his head in slight bewilderment. "No, wait… were you talking to me?"

"I thought you were taking lessons from Shiba-san now, since you and your girlfriend—"

"Not my girlfriend!" Both Renji and Rukia chorused automatically, the ingrained reaction breaking through the pleasant buzz of the sake.

"Just your friend." "Who's a girl."

"He is?" The Thirteenth Divisions' fukutaichou pulled away from the tattooed chest of her oldest friend. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't even tell me," the redhead said sheepishly, "I think. And shouldn't you have seen?"

"Good point... maybe I missed it, because it's usually really really dark?"

"Maybe."

"Anyways," Matsumoto cut in, looking slightly mischevious and less drunk. Had the others been in a similarly clear state, they would have been _terrified_. "You blew up that..." her brow wrinkled. "That place, you know, the one with all the fancy stuffs..."

"The Kuchiki Manor?"

"Yeah, that's it!"

"That's what?"

"...I don't know." The blonde woman admitted. "Were you talking to me?"

Rukia frowned; she wasn't entirely sure. White, she knew, she had been speaking to something white, like Matsumoto's haori. "Are you Chappy?"

"You were talking?" Hisagi Shuuhei hiccupped, blinking sluggishly at the dark-haired shinigami sitting across from him.

"I was?" Hinamori Momo tried to scratch her head in confusion and ended up almost falling out of her seat.

Hisagi frowned bemusedly. "Was what?"

"You'll find he is a whiz of a Wiz," Matsumoto warbled, "if ever a Wiz there was."

"What's a wiz?"

"Someone who whizzes." Hinamori cracked, this time actually falling out of her chair and hitting the ground with a giggle.

"Hinamori-san!" The sake in Kira's hand went flying as he tried to jump over the table, only to almost miss it and fall off the edge, right into Hisagi's lap. The older vice-captain stared blearily down at the blond for nearly a minute before patting him on the head like one would a tired puppy. His kohai didn't notice, since he was apparently trying to doggy paddle to where the vice-captain of the fifth had begun rolling around on the floor, still chuckling. "Don't worry, I'll save you! I'm a lifeguard!"

"When did you learn to swim?"

"I can swim?" The blond shinigami blinked for several long moments, running that through his hazy mind. Then, he let out a yelp and started flailing. "I can't swim!"

"Help!" Hisagi waved his arms, forgetting that there was still a bottle of sake in one of them and drenching everyone around him, including himself. Kira only grew more panicked as the liquor splattered him. "He's drowning!"

"Ooh, are we at the beach?" Matsumoto slurred. "I like the beach. It's sandy, but warm sandy not like Hueco Mundo, and it's sunny and wet too. I'm going to get a nice tan."

And without further ado, she stumbled out of her chair and onto unsteady feet, shrugging off the white haori that marked her as the captain of the Third Division.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me."

There were several seconds during which the only sounds were Hinamori's laughter and Kira's declarations, as the less befuddled drunkards attempted to remember why that voice seemed so familiar.

"Karin-chan!" Naturally, it was the greatest drinker of them all who recognized the voice. Matsumoto waved with her bottle-holding hand at the newcomer. "Have some sake!"

"I'm underage." She said flatly.

"Still?" She pouted. "You need to loosen up! Even Ichigo would always say, "Maybe later" and he was the biggest prude ever! No, wait, Orihime-chan always used to say what you said... what's the drinking age in Hueco Mundo, anyways?"

"Wrong world." Kurosaki Karin, now a young woman, sauntered over to the group and flung herself down into Kira's vacated seat. She leaned over slightly to give the still flailing vice-captain a sharp poke. "You do realize that you're not underwater, right?"

"Of course not, he's too heavy to be underwater!"

She rolled her eyes. "Do you idiots even know what day it is?"

"But it's not day, it's too dark…" Renji slurred. He glanced down at Rukia. "Isn't it?"

"Of course it is!" She hiccupped. "And there're stars, too! So, it's… um… what is it again?"

"Saturday!" Hinamori managed to stop giggling long enough

"No, it's Tuesday!" Hisagi argued. "Yesterday was Thursday, so today's Tuesday!"

"Damnit," Karin wasn't in the mood to deal with the shinigami as drunk as they were. She could only deal with one Isshin at a time, and she could currently hear _that_ one shouting somewhere off in the distance. "How do you activate that sobering kidou Unohana did?"

"They managed to break it last year, so she said that she was going to hide it this time."

She turned to glare at Ishida as he strode through the door. "How do you _break_ a kidou?"

"They're drunk." Chad said bluntly as he stepped in from behind the Quincy. "They'll find a way."

"Yup!" The entire group of drunkards cheered, clinking their bottles together.

Karin rolled her eyes, but there was little real anger behind it. After a moment, she sighed. "Seven years, huh?"

"Really? It seems like it's been longer…"

"Yeah…" the dark-haired girl blinked as something occurred to her. She whirled around to glare at the speaker. "Hey! Weren't you drunk?!"

"Oh, _please_," Matsumoto snorted, "after twenty-three bottles? I'm not a lightweight like these guys."

"Hey, we're not lightweights!" Kira slurred.

"_You're_ not, that's for sure." Hisagi agreed with a bob of his head, the blond was still trying to dog paddle off of his lap.

"I don't think I am, either…" Hinamori mumbled, before her elbows slipped off of the table and she fell back down to the floor. This time, rather than giggle, she started snoring.

"Twenty-three bottles?!" The youngest woman echoed, gaping at the woman before she was forced to shake her head in exasperation. "You know what? I'm not even going to ask, the answer won't make any sense anyways. Now where's that kidou…?"

"You mean the one Unohana-taichou set up?" A nod, which cued a less-than-reassuring giggle. "I threw that out the window before we even started."

Karin's jaw dropped. "How does Toushiro survive with you as his vice-captain?"

"I like to think I add some color to the division." Matsumoto replied smugly. "Taichou's always so gloomy, after all!"

"And now we know why…" Ishida muttered under his breath. Chad made a mental note to offer the white-haired captain some migraine medication next time he was in the living world.

"Oi," the door opened again, and a spiky black head poked its way inside. Unlike the others, Tatsuki had grown her hair out during the last seven years. It was just long enough to be tied back into a messy ponytail, which was how she tended to wear it. "What's taking you so long? He'll be back any minute, and… are they _still_ drunk?"

"Unfortunately." Ishida sighed.

"You humans need to loosen up!" The buxom blonde told them, shaking yet another bottle of sake invitingly. "Come on, a few sips won't hurt."

"You actually left them a few sips?" A new voice drawled. Tatsuki jumped several feet into the air, startled, and turned around with a scowl already on her face…

And then she took a step back, and another, and another until she tripped over the unconscious fukutaichou of the Fifth Division and ended up falling back on her butt. She didn't even seem to notice, and kept on gaping at the new arrival.

Or more accurately, the new arrival_s_. Rukia's alcoholic haze cleared as she felt Renji's arms tighten around her almost painfully, but she couldn't tear her shocked gaze away from the door long enough to even think about hitting him for it.

"Hey, guys," Ichigo said, shifting the orange-haired infant in his arms with the awkward, nervous, and yet fiercely proud grip of a new father. "This is Kurosaki Ringo."

They gaped. Rukia bolted to the window to rid herself of the last of the alcohol. When she learned, less than a month later, that the shock of learning she had an honorary niece hadn't caused it—but despite the knowledge that it was firmly the fault of the founding father-to-be of the Abarai clan, she still took it out on the one who was already changing diapers.

------

Kurosaki Orihime trained long and hard every day for the chance to be return to her family, not only those related by blood shared but by blood shed. She matched herself again and again against the strongest of the Royal Guard, who she'd have to equal if she could ever be safe in the worlds she would always call home. It took almost twenty years, but soon after she returned she stood with her husband, holding his hand in the sunlight for the first time as they watched their eldest son enter the Gotei Thirteen, smugly looking down his nose at those who would have to wait to join him. It was odd that he managed such a feat, considering that Abarai Hisana took after her father in height and towered a good foot above her older nakama, and it was clear from the way she was about to bash him over his spiky orange head that she knew it.

"Niichan, niichan!" Little Sora and Masaki, thankfully, took after their mother in pacifism, and managed to latch onto their brother's new uniform and dissolve the tension with their tearful gazes. "Why do you have to go?"

"So I can learn to kick Hollow a—" Someone coughed meaningfully, and he caught a glimpse of blue hair in the crowd. He gulped; he hadn't inherited _that_ much of his father's insanity. "Er, so I can learn to be a shinigami like tou-san."

"But you're not tou-san, you're niichan!" The male twin sniffled, hugging the leg he had grabbed tighter.

"Don't gooooo!" The other wailed, doing the same.

"Now look what you've done," Hisana drawled in a tone that bordered on gleeful, "you idiot!"

"Shut up and help me out, they're cutting off my circulation!"

Renji and Rukia shook their heads in fond exasperation as their heir made patently false excuses, giving each other "there's no way she gets it from _me_" looks. The veritable army of aunts and uncles of the soon-to-be combatants, both actual and honorary, moved to make sure that none of children of some of the most ridiculously powerful and famous shinigami ever born blew anything up _again_. Meanwhile, Orihime leaned against her husband's arm, taking in his scent, the feeling of the Soul Society's wind against their skin—so close together it might as well as been shared between them, one body, one being. He drew her even closer against him, knowing he'd never let her go—

"ICHIGOOOOOOOO!"

Well, except for when his father tackled him like that. He couldn't exactly let him go without fighting back, after all. And he _definitely_ couldn't let the senile old man anywhere near his wife, she was crazy enough on her own.

------

"_I want to know what that one is."_

_Her gaze followed his, and he turned just in time to catch her smiling, really, _truly_._

"_Kurosaki-kun," she murmured, "that's the north star again."_

------

A/N: Well, that's that. There were a couple scenes I never got to write out, such as Byakuya giving Rukia the badge, along with Hikifune finding out that the Vaizords were still alive, so maybe I'll write one of those sometime. But for now, I'm pretty satisfied with how this turned out.

ETA: Added in a bit to the drinking scene and the one after it. I wanted to make sure that the wishes described in the beginning carried through to the end in more than just my head, and put in a bit more detail about the kids.


End file.
